Host: The Japanese Society of Plant Physiologists
Pages 0257
Seed morphogenesis is one of the most important developmental steps in the plant body plan. To clarify the molecular mechanism of the seed formation of Arabidopsis, we applied forward genetic approach with the transcriptional factor mutant library of CRES-T (Chimeric REpressor Silencing Technology). We identified a seed-shape defective mutant. The responsible gene was a factor (CR245) that belongs to the plant-specific NAC transcriptional factor superfamily. CR245 has the most closely related homologue CR248 that exhibits a similar transcriptional profile to CR245 in the array dataset of AtGenExpress. Although each T-DNA insertion mutant of CR245 and CR248 had the normal seed shape, cr245cr248 double mutant had the abnormal shapes of seeds. Each of CR245 and CR248 was localized in the nucleus, and had a functional transactivation domain in the C-terminal region, respectively. Our results suggest that both CR245 and CR248 regulate seed morphogenesis redundantly.
