Journal
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Volume 108, Issue 28, Pages 11518-11523Publisher
NATL ACAD SCIENCES
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1102274108
Keywords
brown algae; development; phaeophyceae; stramenopiles
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Funding
- Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
- Universite Pierre et Marie Curie
- Groupement d'Interet Scientifique Genomique Marine
- Interreg program France (Channel)-England
- Agence Nationale de la Recherche
- European Erasmus Mundus Program Fellowship
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The brown alga Ectocarpus siliculosus has a haploid-diploid life cycle that involves an alternation between two distinct generations, the sporophyte and the gametophyte. We describe a mutant, ouroboros (oro), in which the sporophyte generation is converted into a functional, gamete-producinggametophyte. The life history of the mutant thus consists of a continuous reiteration of the gametophyte generation. The oro mutant exhibited morphological features typical of the gametophyte generation and accumulated transcripts of gametophyte generation marker genes. Genetic analysis showed that oro behaved as a single, recessive, Mendelian locus that was unlinked to the IMMEDIATE UPRIGHT locus, which has been shown to be necessary for full expression of the sporophyte developmental program. The data presented here indicate that ORO is a master regulator of the gametophyte-to-sporophyte life cycle transition and, moreover, that oro represents a unique class of homeotic mutation that results in switching between two developmental programs that operate at the level of the whole organism.
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