The Lateral suppressor (Ls) gene of tomato encodes a new member of the VHIID protein family

Abstract

The ability of the shoot apical meristem to multiply and distribute its meristematic potential through the formation of axillary meristems is essential for the diversity of forms and growth habits of higher plants. In the lateral suppressor mutant of tomato the initiation of axillary meristems is prevented, thus offering the unique opportunity to study the molecular mechanisms underlying this important function of the shoot apical meristem. We report here the isolation of the Lateral suppressor gene by positional cloning and show that the mutant phenotype is caused by a complete loss of function of a new member of the VHIID family of plant regulatory proteins.

Comparative Sequence Analysis Reveals Extensive Microcolinearity in the Lateral Suppressor Regions of the Tomato, Arabidopsis, and Capsella Genomes

“…It has not been established how large the colinear regions are in tomato and the cruciferous species. Molecular marker CD65 resides together with the analyzed 57-kb contig on a yeast artificial chromosome that spans 320 kb (Schumacher et al, 1999); hence, it should be separated by at most 267 kb from gene Le-E on the cosmid contig. Sequences homologous with CD65 in Arabidopsis are located Ͻ13 kb from gene At-E on chromosome 1.…”

“…Le-A corresponds to the Lateral suppressor gene of tomato (GenBank accession number AF098674; Schumacher et al, 1999), Le-B represents a protein of unknown function, Le-C has similarity to receptor kinase-like proteins, Le-D contains a domain that is characteristic of the WRKY transcription factor family (Eulgem et al, 2000), and Le-E shows similarity to chloride channels.…”

“…The sequence of a cosmid contig spanning 57 kb of genomic DNA was determined (Figure 1; EMBL accession number AJ303345). Cosmid clones and a yeast artificial chromosome clone spanning this area were used as probes to isolate cDNAs corresponding to four different genes ( Le-A , GenBank accession number AF098674; Le-B , EMBL accession number AJ303342; Le-D , EMBL accession number AJ303343; and Le-E , EMBL accession number AJ303344) from a tomato cDNA library (Schumacher et al, 1999). Sequence comparisons revealed that the cDNAs represent cognate sequences for genes on the cosmid contig that have between 99.8 and 100% identity to the tomato genomic DNA sequence.…”

“…Colinear chromosome segments between distantly related species are expected to be small (Paterson et al, 1996); therefore, a microsynteny approach was taken to search for colinearity between the tomato and Arabidopsis genomes. The sequence of a region of the tomato genome spanning five genes including the Lateral suppressor gene (Schumacher et al, 1999) was determined. Sequence comparisons were performed to identify orthologous gene sequences in two species of the Brassicaceae family, Arabidopsis and Capsella.…”

Crystal Structure of the GRAS Domain of SCARECROW-LIKE7 inOryza sativa

“…Most of these proteins play key roles in the transcriptional regulation and signaling transduction related to plant growth and development (Bolle, 2004;Achard et al, 2006). Examples include Arabidopsis thaliana DELLA in gibberellin (GA) signaling during regulation of plant growth (Peng et al, 1997;Sun and Gubler, 2004;Murase et al, 2008), Medicago truncatula NSP1-NSP2 in DNA promoter regulation for nodulation signaling (Kaló et al, 2005;Smit et al, 2005;, Arabidopsis SCR-SHR in regulation of radial patterning for root and shoot (Pysh et al, 1999;Helariutta et al, 2000;Nakajima et al, 2001), Lilium longiflorum SCL in auxin and stress-induced signaling (Morohashi et al, 2003;Sánchez et al, 2007), At-PAT1 in phytochrome light signal transduction and plant defense (Bolle et al, 2000;TorresGalea et al, 2006), At-LAS in axillary meristem development (Schumacher et al, 1999;Greb et al, 2003), and Petunia hybrida HAM in shoot meristem maintenance (Stuurman et al, 2002).…”