A collaborative research group led by Professor Takeshi Miura of the Graduate School of Medicine, Kyushu University has clarified the mechanism by which the cells that form the pores of a plant can divide correctly only once.
Most plants have many small holes called stomata for gas exchange.The stomata are surrounded by a pair of guard cells, but the guard cells need to trigger control division only once for the pores to develop properly.Although the existence of this division control-related gene was known, the whole picture of the mechanism that causes only one division has not been clarified.
With this discovery, the group first unveiled a genetic network involved in cell division using RNA sequencing in collaboration with bioinformatics.Next, using this gene network as a clue, it was experimentally clarified that the gene network consisting of three groups controls stomatal division.Furthermore, the behavior of this network was mathematically modeled, and the behavior of cell division in various mutants with abnormalities in the network was reproduced and predicted.From these series of studies, it became clear that the genetic network of the three groups controls only one division.
This time, by fusing three different fields of botany, bioinformatics, and mathematical modeling, we succeeded in elucidating a part of the mechanism by which the stomata, which are indispensable for plants, are correctly formed by a pair of cells.
Paper information:[Developmental Cell] MUTE Directly Orchestrates Cell-State Switch and the Single Symmetric Division to Create Stomata
