Direct interaction of ligand–receptor pairs specifying stomatal patterning
- Jin Suk Lee1,
- Takeshi Kuroha1,5,
- Marketa Hnilova2,
- Dmitriy Khatayevich2,
- Masahiro M. Kanaoka1,6,
- Jessica M. McAbee1,
- Mehmet Sarikaya2,
- Candan Tamerler2 and
- Keiko U. Torii1,3,4,7
- 1Department of Biology,
- 2Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Genetically Engineered Materials Science and Engineering Center,
- 3Howard Hughes Medical Institute, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98195, USA;
- 4PRESTO, Japan Science and Technology Agency, Tokyo 102-0075, Japan
Abstract
Valves on the plant epidermis called stomata develop according to positional cues, which likely involve putative ligands (EPIDERMAL PATTERNING FACTORS [EPFs]) and putative receptors (ERECTA family receptor kinases and TOO MANY MOUTHS [TMM]) in Arabidopsis. Here we report the direct, robust, and saturable binding of bioactive EPF peptides to the ERECTA family. In contrast, TMM exhibits negligible binding to EPF1 but binding to EPF2. The ERECTA family forms receptor homomers in vivo. On the other hand, TMM associates with the ERECTA family but not with itself. While ERECTA family receptor kinases exhibit complex redundancy, blocking ERECTA and ERECTA-LIKE1 (ERL1) signaling confers specific insensitivity to EPF2 and EPF1, respectively. Our results place the ERECTA family as the primary receptors for EPFs with TMM as a signal modulator and establish EPF2–ERECTA and EPF1–ERL1 as ligand–receptor pairs specifying two steps of stomatal development: initiation and spacing divisions.
Keywords
- biochemical interaction
- cell type differentiation
- peptide ligands
- plant biology
- receptor kinases
- stomatal development
- tissue patterning
Footnotes
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↵7 Corresponding author.
E-mail ktorii{at}u.washington.edu.
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Supplemental material is available for this article.
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Article published online ahead of print. Article and publication date are online at http://www.genesdev.org/cgi/doi/10.1101/gad.179895.111.
- Received September 26, 2011.
- Accepted November 29, 2011.
- Copyright © 2012 by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press
Freely available online through the Genes & Development Open Access option.