Arabidopsis ABA INSENSITIVE4 regulates lipid mobilization in the embryo and reveals repression of seed germination by the endosperm

Regulation of seed germination requires coordinate action by the embryo and surrounding endosperm. We used Arabidopsis thaliana to establish the relative roles of embryo and endosperm in the control of seed germination and seedling establishment. We previously showed that endospermic oil reserves are used postgerminatively via gluconeogenesis to fuel seedling establishment and that lipid breakdown is repressed by abscisic acid (ABA) in embryo but not endosperm tissues. Here, we use RNA amplification to describe the transcriptome of the endosperm and compare the hormone responses of endosperm and embryo tissues. We show that the endosperm responds to both ABA and gibberellin but that ABA in particular regulates nuclear but not plastid-encoded photosynthetic gene expression in the embryo. We also show that ABA INSENSITIVE4 (ABI4) expression is confined to the embryo, accounts for the major differences in embryo response to ABA, and defines a role for ABI4 as a repressor of lipid breakdown. Furthermore, ABI5 expression in the endosperm defines a second region of altered ABA signaling in the micropylar endosperm cap. Finally, embryo and endosperm ABA signaling mutants demonstrate the spatial specificity of ABA action in seed germination. We conclude that the single cell endosperm layer plays an active role in the regulation of seed germination in Arabidopsis.