recessive antimorphic alleles overcome functionally redundant loci to reveal tso1 function in arabidopsis flowers and meristems隐性antimorphic等位基因克服功能冗余基因座揭示tso1函数拟南芥花和分生组织.pdfVIP

Recessive Antimorphic Alleles Overcome Functionally Redundant Loci to Reveal TSO1 Function in Arabidopsis Flowers and Meristems 1 1,2 1 Paja Sijacic , Wanpeng Wang , Zhongchi Liu * 1 Department of Cell Biology and Molecular Genetics, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland, United States of America, 2 Plant Science Graduate Program, Department of Plant Science and Landscape Architecture, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland, United States of America Abstract Arabidopsis TSO1 encodes a protein with conserved CXC domains known to bind DNA and is homologous to animal proteins that function in chromatin complexes. tso1 mutants fall into two classes due to their distinct phenotypes. Class I, represented by two different missense mutations in the CXC domain, leads to failure in floral organ development, sterility, and fasciated inflorescence meristems. Class II, represented by a nonsense mutation and a T-DNA insertion line, develops wild-type–like flowers and inflorescences but shows severely reduced fertility. The phenotypic variability of tso1 alleles presents challenges in determining the true function of TSO1. In this study, we use artificial microRNA, double mutant analysis, and bimolecular fluorescence complementation assay to investigate the molecular basis underlying these two distinct classes of phenotypes. We show that the class I mutants could be converted into class II by artificial microRNA knockdown of the tso1 mutant transcript, suggesting that class I alleles produce antimorphic mutant proteins that interfere with functionally redundant loci. We identified one such redundant factor coded by the closely related TSO1 homolog SOL2. We show that the class I phenotype can be