College of Horticulture, FAFU-UCR Joint Center for Horticultural Biology and Metabolomics, Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University, Fuzhou 350002, China.
Institute of Integrative Genome Biology and Department of Botany and Plant Science, University of California, Riverside, CA, USA.
Dev Cell. 2023 Feb 27;58(4):278-288.e5. doi: 10.1016/j.devcel.2023.01.009. Epub 2023 Feb 17.
Hair-like structures are shared by most living organisms. The hairs on plant surfaces, commonly referred to as trichomes, form diverse types to sense and protect against various stresses. However, it is unclear how trichomes differentiate into highly variable forms. Here, we show that a homeodomain leucine zipper (HD-ZIP) transcription factor named Woolly controls the fates of distinct trichomes in tomato via a dosage-dependent mechanism. The autocatalytic reinforcement of Woolly is counteracted by an autoregulatory negative feedback loop, creating a circuit with a high or low Woolly level. This biases the transcriptional activation of separate antagonistic cascades that lead to different trichome types. Our results identify the developmental switch of trichome formation and provide mechanistic insights into the progressive fate specification in plants, as well as a path to enhancing plant stress resistance and the production of beneficial chemicals.
毛发状结构为大多数生物体所共有。植物表面的毛发，通常被称为表皮毛，形成多种类型以感知和抵御各种胁迫。然而，表皮毛如何分化成高度可变的形式尚不清楚。在这里，我们发现一个称为 Woolly 的同源域亮氨酸拉链 (HD-ZIP) 转录因子通过剂量依赖机制控制番茄中不同表皮毛的命运。Woolly 的自催化增强作用被一个自动调节的负反馈环抵消，形成一个具有高或低 Woolly 水平的回路。这会偏向于不同表皮毛类型的独立拮抗级联的转录激活。我们的研究结果确定了表皮毛形成的发育开关，并为植物中渐进的命运特化提供了机制上的见解，以及增强植物抗胁迫能力和有益化学物质生产的途径。
