A group of TCP transcription factors is a missing link in strigolactone signaling.
Huang Y, Bi L, Huang Y, Liu J, Wang L
Plant Signaling
Strigolactones are the hormones that decide how bushy or tall your garden plants grow — cracking how they work at the molecular level could lead to crops and ornamentals bred to branch exactly how we want, without extra pruning or chemical treatments.
Plants use a hormone called strigolactone to decide how many branches to grow and how tall to get. Researchers found that a group of proteins called CIN-TCPs acts like a GPS, steering another protein to the exact genes that strigolactone needs to switch on or off. When scientists removed these TCP proteins, plants lost much of their ability to respond to the hormone — and surprisingly, short mutant plants missing strigolactone grew back to normal height, opening a new door to understanding what controls plant stature.
Key Findings
TCP4 shows the highest chromatin co-localization frequency with SMXL6 out of 108 transcription factors screened, co-localizing at promoters of 18 strigolactone-induced target genes including BRC1.
Loss of CIN-TCP function (tcp3/4/10 mutants) reduced hormone responsiveness of strigolactone-induced genes and, when introduced into strigolactone-deficient mutants, restored BRC1 expression above wild-type levels — yet only partially rescued the excess-branching phenotype, indicating BRC1 is not the sole branching regulator.
The tcp3/4/10 triple mutation unexpectedly rescued the dwarf phenotype of strigolactone-deficient mutants, revealing a novel TCP-dependent mechanism underlying strigolactone-regulated plant height.
chevron_right Technical Summary
Scientists discovered that a family of proteins called TCP transcription factors acts as a molecular bridge, guiding a key hormone signaling repressor (SMXL6) to the right spots on plant DNA so that strigolactone hormones can properly control branching and plant height.
Abstract Preview
Strigolactones (SLs) are plant-specialized butenolide signaling molecules, recognized as endogenous plant hormones, that control plant development and environmental adaptation. In Arabidopsis (Arab...
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