spacer gif spacer gif spacer gif spacer gif ARCHIVE ANNOUNCEMENT! spacer gif
QUICK SEARCH:   [advanced]


spacer gif
     Home     Help     Feedback     Subscriptions     Archive     Search     Table of Contents    

First published online 12 September 2007
doi: 10.1242/dev.011510

Development 134, 3593-3601 (2007)
Published by The Company of Biologists 2007
This Article
Right arrow Figures Only
Right arrow Full Text
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow Supplementary Material
Right arrow All Versions of this Article:
dev.011510v1
134/20/3593    most recent
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Similar articles in PubMed
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrow reprints & permissions
Citing Articles
Right arrow Citing Articles via HighWire
Right arrow Citing Articles via Google Scholar
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Gremski, K.
Right arrow Articles by Yanofsky, M. F.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
PubMed
Right arrow PubMed Citation
Right arrow Articles by Gremski, K.
Right arrow Articles by Yanofsky, M. F.

The HECATE genes regulate female reproductive tract development in Arabidopsis thaliana

Kristina Gremski, Gary Ditta and Martin F. Yanofsky*

Section of Cell and Developmental Biology, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093, USA.

* Author for correspondence (e-mail: marty{at}ucsd.edu)

Accepted 2 August 2007

Successful fertilization in plants requires the properly coordinated development of female reproductive tissues, including stigma, style, septum and transmitting tract. We have identified three closely related genes, HECATE1 (HEC1), HECATE2 (HEC2) and HECATE3 (HEC3), the expression domains of which encompass these regions of the Arabidopsis gynoecium. The HEC genes encode putative basic helix-loop-helix (bHLH) transcription factors with overlapping functionality. Depending on the amount of HEC function missing, plants exhibit varying degrees of infertility, defects in septum, transmitting tract and stigma development and impaired pollen tube growth. The observed phenotypes are similar to those reported for mutations in the SPATULA (SPT) gene, which also encodes a bHLH transcription factor required for development of the same female tissues. We show that the HEC proteins can dimerize with SPT in a yeast two-hybrid system, indicating that the HEC genes work in concert with SPT to coordinately regulate development of the female reproductive tract. Furthermore, when the HEC genes are ectopically expressed from the CaMV 35S promoter, some of the resulting transgenic plants show pin-shaped inflorescences, suggesting that the HEC genes are probably involved in auxin-mediated control of gynoecium patterning.

Key words: Arabidopsis, Development, Stigma, Transmitting tract, Pollen tube growth




This article has been cited by other articles:


Home page
 J Exp BotHome page
Compiled by, F. Tooke, T. Chiurugwi, and N. Battey
Flowering Newsletter bibliography for 2007
J. Exp. Bot., July 18, 2008; (2008) ern109v1.
[Full Text] [PDF]


© The Company of Biologists Ltd 2007