The roles of C-TERMINALLY ENCODED PEPTIDES in Arabidopsis root development

作者：Christina Delay · 发表于：ANU Open Research (Australian National University) · 年份：2015 · DOI：10.25911/5d78d5a1604e7 · 研究领域：Plant nutrient uptake and metabolism

Plants must integrate a complex array of internal and external signals to optimise their growth in changing environments. The ability to modulate developmental responses to varying conditions allows them to rapidly adapt to short and long term changes in nutrient availability. In particular, the root system shows remarkable plasticity and can change its overall architecture to maximise nutrient uptake. Understanding how this plasticity is regulated could enable development of crops that are better suited to their environment and help mitigate problems associated with over-use of fertilisers. However, our current understanding of how environmental information is integrated into developmental programs is limited. Small regulatory peptides have arisen as important regulators of plant growth and development. They are generally thought to be secreted into the apoplast where they can interact with receptors on cell surfaces, thereby acting as non-cell autonomous signals. The C-TERMINALLY ENCODED PEPTIDE (CEP) gene family, which encodes small regulatory peptides, has 15 members in Arabidopsis. This family is characterised by a conserved 15 amino acid peptide CEP domain containing several residues which may be post-translationally modified. In this thesis, the roles of the CEP peptide family in regulating root development in response to environmental stimuli were examined. To initiate the study of CEPs in Arabidopsis, the relationships between the 15 genes, their protein and peptide ...