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Research article2013Peer reviewedOpen access

Increased Maternal Genome Dosage Bypasses the Requirement of the FIS Polycomb Repressive Complex 2 in Arabidopsis Seed Development

Kradolfer, David; Hennig, Lars; Köhler, Claudia

Abstract

Seed development in flowering plants is initiated after a double fertilization event with two sperm cells fertilizing two female gametes, the egg cell and the central cell, leading to the formation of embryo and endosperm, respectively. In most species the endosperm is a polyploid tissue inheriting two maternal genomes and one paternal genome. As a consequence of this particular genomic configuration the endosperm is a dosage sensitive tissue, and changes in the ratio of maternal to paternal contributions strongly impact on endosperm development. The FERTILIZATION INDEPENDENT SEED (FIS) Polycomb Repressive Complex 2 (PRC2) is essential for endosperm development; however, the underlying forces that led to the evolution of the FIS-PRC2 remained unknown. Here, we show that the functional requirement of the FIS-PRC2 can be bypassed by increasing the ratio of maternal to paternal genomes in the endosperm, suggesting that the main functional requirement of the FIS-PRC2 is to balance parental genome contributions and to reduce genetic conflict. We furthermore reveal that the AGAMOUS LIKE (AGL) gene AGL62 acts as a dosage-sensitive seed size regulator and that reduced expression of AGL62 might be responsible for reduced size of seeds with increased maternal genome dosage.

Published in

PLoS Genetics
2013, Volume: 9, number: 1, article number: e1003163
Publisher: PUBLIC LIBRARY SCIENCE

      SLU Authors

    • Kradolfer, David

      • Department of Plant Biology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
      • Linnean Centre for Plant Biology
      • Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zürich)

        • UKÄ Subject classification

        Bioinformatics and Systems Biology
        Botany
        Cell Biology

        Publication identifier

        DOI: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgen.1003163

        Permanent link to this page (URI)

        https://res.slu.se/id/publ/56142