Conservation of fruit dehiscence pathways between Lepidium campestre and Arabidopsis thaliana sheds light on the regulation of INDEHISCENT.

The mode of fruit opening is an important agronomic and evolutionary trait that has been studied intensively in the major plant model system Arabidopsis thaliana. Because fruit morphology is highly variable between species, and is also often the target of artificial selection during breeding, it is interesting to investigate whether a change in fruit morphology may alter the developmental pathway leading to fruit opening. Here we have studied fruit development in Lepidium campestre, a Brassicaceae species that forms silicles instead of siliques. Transgenic L. campestre plants with altered expression levels of orthologs of A. thaliana fruit developmental genes (ALCATRAZ, FRUITFULL, INDEHISCENT and SHATTERPROOF1,2) were found to be defective in fruit dehiscence, and anatomical sections revealed similar changes in tissue patterning as found in respective A. thaliana mutants. Gene expression analyses demonstrated a high degree of conservation in gene regulatory circuits, indicating that, despite great differences in fruit morphology, the process of fruit opening remains basically unchanged between species. Interestingly, our data identify ALCATRAZ as a negative regulator of INDEHISCENT in L. campestre. By mutant analysis, we found the same regulatory relationship in A. thaliana also, thereby shedding new light on how ALCATRAZ drives separation layer formation.

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