Regulatory circuits involving bud dormancy factor PpeDAM6

Because environmental conditions can be unpredictable, plants are typically subjected to various stresses throughout their life cycle, limiting their growth and development. Unlike animals, plants cannot move to avoid environmental stress, and they have therefore evolved a complex array of mechanisms for responding to adverse conditions. During the winter in cold and temperate regions, plant organs and tissues cease active growth, and plants enter a period of dormancy to avoid cold stress. Dormancy is released and active growth resumes under suitable environmental conditions in the spring. There are several kinds of plant dormancy, including seed dormancy and bud dormancy. Bud dormancy is a self-protective mechanism that plays an important role in growth, development, and reproduction and thus contributes to plant survival and evolution. The timing of bud dormancy is also important for agricultural production, particularly in perennial crops such as tree fruits. Analyzing the mechanisms of plant bud dormancy provides insight into plant stress responses and ensures the safe production of plants.

The dormancy-associated MADS-box (DAM) genes were identified by the Abbott laboratory in a natural peach mutant. With advances in research on the DAMs, they were found to play a key role in the regulation of growth arrest and physiological dormancy. Therefore, comprehensive study of the DAM genes can help to reveal the underlying mechanisms of dormancy formation, maintenance, and release, which are important for plant growth, survival, and geographic distribution.

Recently, scientists from the Instituto Valenciano de Investigaciones Agrarias (IVIA) found that three peach BASIC PENTACYSTEINE PROTEINs (PpeBPCs) can interact with two GA-repeat motifs in an H3K27me3-enriched region of the first intron of PpeDAM6, thereby repressing PpeDAM6 transcriptional activity. Just as environmental conditions regulate seed germination through several plant hormone pathways, altered homeostasis of jasmonate, cytokinin, gibberellins, and abscisic acid appears to underlie the stunted growth phenotype of PpeDAM6 overexpression transgenic lines. This research was published in Horticulture Research.

“PpeDAM6 is regulated by the cumulative perception of chilling in a genotype-dependent manner, is affected by sequential known epigenetic events, and alters key hormonal and developmental pathways in a concerted fashion to modulate cell growth and tolerance to abiotic stresses”, Prof Ríos said. Certainly, the findings of this team provide us with a deeper understanding of the important role and mechanism of the PpeDAM6 gene in the maintenance of bud dormancy and growth inhibition.

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Reference

Authors

Alba Lloret1, Carles Quesada-Traver1, Ana Conejero1, Vicent Arbona2, Concepción Gómez-Mena3, César Petri4, Jesús A. Sánchez-Navarro3, Elena Zuriaga1, Carmen Leida1, María Luisa Badenes1 and Gabino Ríos1

Affiliations

1 Instituto Valenciano de Investigaciones Agrarias, 46113 Moncada, Valencia, Spain.

2 Departament de Ciències Agràries i del Medi Natural, Universitat Jaume I, Castello de la Plana, Spain.

3 Instituto de Biología Molecular y Celular de Plantas,Universitat Politècnica de València-Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 46022 Valencia, Spain.

4 Departamento de Fruticultura Subtropical y Mediterránea, IHSM-UMA-CSIC, Avenida Dr. Wienberg, s/n 29750 Algarrobo-Costa, Málaga, Spain

About Professor Ríos

Prof. Ríos works for the Instituto Valenciano de Investigaciones Agrarias (IVIA), and his research experience is focused on plant molecular biology and genetics. During his stay in prof. Csaba Koncz’s group, in the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breding (Cologne, Germany), he contributed to reverse genetics studies in Arabidopsis thaliana by developing a screening procedure for a large collection of T-DNA insertional mutants. He is also interested in how the epigenetic regulation of gene expression affects various plant physiological processes, and he helped to characterize chromatin remodelling complexes in Arabidopsis thaliana. Currently, he studies the genetic regulation of bud dormancy and flowering in peach (Prunus persica), funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 and the European Union “NextGenerationEU”/PRTR with project references PCI2020-120686-2 and PID2020-114380RB-I00.