Fig. 5: Effect of altered vessel formation on water usage and stomatal conductance.
From: Strigolactones optimise plant water usage by modulating vessel formation
a Toluidine blue-stained hypocotyl cross-sections of five-week-old plants carrying a PXYpro:GR-MPΔIII/IV transgene in wild type or in smxl6;7;8 triple mutants. Plants were treated with mock or DEX solutions for the last two weeks. Vessels were automatically identified using ImageJ and subsequent manual correction (marked in red). Scale bar represents 100 μm. b, c Vessel element numbers per section (b) and individual vessel element area mean per section (c) in response to DEX treatment comparing wild type and smxl6;7;8 mutants as shown in (a). n = 12 (WT, Mock), 16 (WT, DEX), 14 (smxl6;7;8, Mock), 16 (smxl6;7;8, DEX) plants for each group. Asterisks indicate p < 0.01 in the post-hoc Bonferroni correction after one-way ANOVA for the effect of treatment for each genotype. p = 6.8e-09 (WT, b), p = 3.6e-05 (smxl6;7;8, b), p = 2.9e-09 (WT, c), p = 0.35 (smxl6;7;8, c). d Quantification and comparison of stomatal conductance in PXYpro:GR-MPΔIII/IV plants treated with mock or DEX solution under well-watered or water-deficiency (10 days) conditions. Stomatal conductance of three leaves was measured per plant using an SC1 Leave prometer. n = 15 plants for each condition. The asterisk indicates significance when the two-sided Welch’s t-test was applied, *p < 0.01, p = 2.8e-03 (well-watered), p = 4.9e-09 (10 days water deficiency). e Hypocotyl cross sections of wild type and d14 plants after CFDA application. Xylem autofluorescence shown in blue and CFDA-derived signal in green. f Quantification of CFDA signal intensity between WT and d14 in hypocotyl cross sections shown in (e). Scale bar indicates 50 µm. n = 33 plants (wild type) and 23 plants (d14). p = 6.5e-05 (two-sided Welch’s t-test). g Toluidine blue-stained hypocotyl vessel elements of five-week-old plants subjected to a soil-based water deficiency treatment. Vessels were automatically identified using VesselWizard and subsequent manual correction. Stress-related vessels are marked with asterisks. Scale bar represents 100 μm. h Quantification of stressed vessel element number between wild type and d14. The asterisk indicates significance when the two-sided Welch’s t-test was applied, *p < 0.01, p = 2.1e-06. n = 21 plants (wild type) and 15 plants (d14). Source data are provided as a Source Data file. For box plot definition, please see “Statistics and reproducibility” section.
