Journal
NATURE PLANTS
Volume 1, Issue 7, Pages 1-7Publisher
NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP
DOI: 10.1038/NPLANTS.2015.89
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Funding
- Scientific Technique Research Promotion Program for Agriculture, Forestry, Fisheries and Food Industry
- RIKEN Special Postdoctoral Researcher Programme
- European Union Seventh Framework Programme Network of Excellence EpiGeneSys
- CNRS
- French Ministere de la Recherche et de l'Enseignement Superieur
- France-Berkeley grant
- EMBO LT
- Human Frontiers Science Program Postdoctoral Fellowship
- Hellman Junior Faculty Fellowship
- [22119010]
- BBSRC [BB/H004319/1] Funding Source: UKRI
- Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research [15K21750, 15K18564, 15H05955, 15K18565, 15H05961] Funding Source: KAKEN
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Plant somatic cells are generally acknowledged to retain totipotency, the potential to develop into any cell type within an organism. This astonishing plasticity may contribute to a high regenerative capacity on severe damage, but how plants control this potential during normal post-embryonic development remains largely unknown(1,2). Here we show that POLYCOMB REPRESSIVE COMPLEX 2 (PRC2), a chromatin regulator that maintains gene repression through histone modification, prevents dedifferentiation of mature somatic cells in Arabidopsis thaliana roots. Loss-of-function mutants in PRC2 subunits initially develop unicellular root hairs indistinguishable from those in wild type but fail to retain the differentiated state, ultimately resulting in the generation of an unorganized cell mass and somatic embryos from a single root hair. Strikingly, mutant root hairs complete the normal endoreduplication programme, increasing their nuclear ploidy, but subsequently reinitiate mitotic division coupled with successive DNA replication. Our data show that the WOUND INDUCED DEDIFFERENTIATION3 (WIND3) and LEAFY COTYLEDON2 (LEC2) genes are among the PRC2 targets involved in this reprogramming, as their ectopic overexpression partly phenocopies the dedifferentiation phenotype of PRC2 mutants. These findings unveil the pivotal role of PRC2-mediated gene repression in preventing unscheduled reprogramming of fully differentiated plant cells.
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