Plant stomata developmental regulation in response to elevated CO2

2016 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 25711017
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (A)
• Allocation Type: Partial Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Plant molecular biology/Plant physiology
• Research Institution: The University of Tokyo
• Principal Investigator: Higaki Takumi 東京大学, 新領域創成科学研究科, 特任准教授 (90578486)
• Project Period (FY): 2013-04-01 – 2017-03-31
• Keywords: 気孔 / 二酸化炭素 / 葉表皮細胞 / バイオイメージング / シロイヌナズナ / 形態計測 / 画像クラスタリング / 数理モデル

Outline of Final Research Achievements

Plants regulate guard cell differentiation in response to environmental cues including CO2 levels. Some reports have shown that elevated CO2 concentrations suppress stomatal development, but other studies could not reproduce the effect. To clarify this issue, quantitative imaging analysis of stomatal pattern formation was conducted with Arabidopsis cotyledons grown under ambient and elevated CO2 conditions. Our microscopic image analysis revealed that elevated CO2 did not affect stomatal density/index but perturbed the uniform distribution of stomata, with excess satellite stomata and meristemoids. We then used an overexpression line of a gene for a DNA replication licensing factor, CDC6, which was reported to positively regulate satellite meristemoid production. The overexpressor showed hypersensitivity to elevated CO2-induced stomatal distribution changes, suggesting that elevated CO2 positively regulates CDC6-mediated satellite stomata production, at least in Arabidopsis cotyledons.

Free Research Field

植物細胞生物学