Skip to main content
SLU publication database (SLUpub)

Abstract

Perennial plants, such as trees native to temperate and boreal regions, exhibit meristems that undergo annual cycles of activity and rest to synchronize their growth cycles withseasonal changes, ensuring survival under harsh winter conditions. The arrest of shootmeristem growth, known as growth cessation, is a critical initial step for trees to enterdormancy. This process is triggered by a combination of endogenous and exogenous signals, yet the molecular mechanisms and signaling pathways underlying growth ces-sation remain poorly understood. In this study, we demonstrate that Populus orthologs of APETALA2-like transcription factors (AP2Ls), the primary regulators of global pro-liferative arrest (GPA) in Arabidopsis, play a crucial role in the regulation of seasonal growth cessation in hybrid aspen trees. In particular, AP2Ls act as important activators of the expression of FLOWERING LOCUS T2 (FT2), a key gene for short-day- induced growth cessation. This contrasts with the established role of AP2Ls as repressors of FTin annual plants. Yet, the pathway itself is conserved with the pathway regulating GPA in annual plants, a completely different process during the plant life cycle. Our research highlights both the conserved roles and functional diversities of AP2Ls in a more general balancing of meristem proliferation and arrest in perennial plants, providing insights into the evolutionary adaptation of growth regulation mechanisms across plant species.

Keywords

Populus; seasonal growth; meristem arrest; APETALA2

Published in

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
2025, volume: 122, number: 48, article number: e2505641122

SLU Authors

UKÄ Subject classification

Botany
Forest Science

Publication identifier

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2505641122

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/145076