MERISTEM DEFECTIVE/DEFECTIVELY ORGANIZED TRIBUTARIES2 regulates the balance between stemness and differentiation in the root meristem through RNA splicing control

Thompson, H.L.; Shen, W.; Matus, R.; Kakkar, M.; Jones, C.; Dolan, D.; Grellscheid, S.; Yang, X.; Zhang, N.; Mozaffari-Jovin, S.; Chen, C.; Zhang, X.; Topping, J.F.; Lindsey, K.

Abstract

Plants respond to environmental stresses through controlled stem cell maintenance and meristem activity. One level of transcriptional control is RNA alternative splicing. However the mechanistic link between stress, meristem function and RNA splicing is poorly understood. The MERISTEM-DEFECTIVE (MDF)/DEFECTIVELY ORGANIZED TRIBUTARIES (DOT2) gene of Arabidopsis encodes a SR-related family protein, required for meristem function and leaf vascularization, and is the likely orthologue of the human SART1 and yeast snu66 splicing factors. MDF is required for the correct splicing and expression of key transcripts associated with root meristem function. We identified RSZ33 and ACC1, both known to regulate cell patterning, as splicing targets required for MDF function in the meristem. MDF expression is modulated by osmotic and cold stress, associated with differential splicing and specific isoform accumulation and shuttling between nucleus and cytosol, and acts in part via a splicing target SR34. We propose a model in which MDF controls splicing in the root meristem to promote stemness and repress stress response and cell differentiation pathways.

Citation

Thompson, H., Shen, W., Matus, R., Kakkar, M., Jones, C., Dolan, D., …Lindsey, K. MERISTEM DEFECTIVE/DEFECTIVELY ORGANIZED TRIBUTARIES2 regulates the balance between stemness and differentiation in the root meristem through RNA splicing control. https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.11.23.517632. Manuscript submitted for publication

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Online Publication Date: Nov 24, 2022
• Deposit Date: Nov 28, 2022
• Publicly Available Date: Nov 28, 2022
• Journal: bioRxiv (Preprint Server for Biology)
• Peer Reviewed: Not Peer Reviewed
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.11.23.517632
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1185957