Handling Editor: Ykä Helariutta
ABSTRACT
Cereal grain develops from fertilised florets. Alterations in floret and grain development greatly influence grain yield and quality. Despite this, little is known about the underlying genetic control of these processes, especially in key temperate cereals such as barley and wheat. Using a combination of near-isogenic mutant comparisons, gene editing and genetic analyses, we reveal that HvAPETALA2 (HvAP2) controls floret organ identity, floret boundaries, and maternal tissue differentiation and elimination during grain development. These new roles of HvAP2 correlate with changes in grain size and HvAP2-dependent expression of specific HvMADS-box genes, including the B-sister gene, HvMADS29. Consistent with this, gene editing demonstrates that HvMADS29 shares roles with HvAP2 in maternal tissue differentiation. We also discovered that a gain-of-function HvAP2 allele masks changes in floret organ identity and grain size due to loss of barley LAXATUM.A/BLADE-ON-PETIOLE2 (HvBOP2) gene function. Taken together, we reveal novel pleiotropic roles and regulatory interactions for an AP2-like gene controlling floret and grain development in a temperate cereal.
Footnotes
Competing interests
The authors declare no competing or financial interests.
Author contributions
Conceptualization: S.M.M.; Methodology: S.M.M.; Formal analysis: J.R.S., C.U.S., S.M.M.; Investigation: J.R.S., C.U.S., X.Y., S.S., E.v.E., S.C., L.M.P., M.E., S.D., K.H., S.M.M.; Resources: L.G.W., J.S., A.B., M.R.T., S.M.M.; Writing - original draft: J.R.S., S.M.M.; Writing - review & editing: J.R.S., X.Y., S.D., K.H., M.R.T., S.M.M.; Supervision: S.D., K.H., M.R.T., S.M.M.; Project administration: M.R.T., S.M.M.; Funding acquisition: M.R.T., S.M.M.
Funding
This work was supported by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) grant (BB/L001934/1) to S.M.M., and an Australian Research Council grant (DP180104092) to M.R.T. S.M.M. also acknowledges support from the University of Dundee and a Personal Research Fellowship from the Royal Society of Edinburgh. J.S. and K.H. acknowledge funding from the Scottish Government RESAS strategic research programme. J.R.S. and L.M.P. are supported by the BBSRC EASTBIO PhD program (BB/J01446X/1). C.U.S. was supported by the Tertiary Education Trust Fund, Nigeria. M.E. is supported by a Cara Research Fellowship and by the University of Dundee. E.v.E. and S.C. were supported by the Erasmus+ programme and their home institutes, Hogeschool van Arnhem en Nijmegen and De Leijgraaf, respectively. A.B. is funded by the European Research Council (Shuffle Project ID: 669182).
Supplementary information
Supplementary information available online at https://dev.biologists.org/lookup/doi/10.1242/dev.194894.supplemental
- Received July 21, 2020.
- Accepted January 25, 2021.
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