Low soil nitrogen triggers a molecular switch that rushes plants to flower
Tian W, Brunkard JO, Qian S, Zhong X
Plant Signaling
The spring bolting that ruins a bed of arugula or spinach before you've made a dent in it traces back to a molecular switch this study just decoded, and low soil nitrogen is often the trigger pulling it.
Plants track when to flower partly by reading chemical tags on their DNA. A gatekeeper protein holds flowering genes quiet until conditions are right. When nitrogen runs low in the soil, a key signaling enzyme can no longer protect that gatekeeper from breaking down, it disappears, and the plant rushes to flower, often before it's grown to full size.
Key Findings
TOR kinase directly phosphorylates EBS at two specific residues (S195 and S196), stabilizing the protein and keeping flowering genes including FT transcriptionally repressed.
Nitrogen deficiency reduces TOR activity, triggering EBS protein degradation and premature activation of floral transition genes.
EBS reads two opposing histone marks (H3K27me3 and H3K4me3) and can switch its binding preference to control the shift from vegetative to reproductive growth.
chevron_right Technical Summary
Plants use a molecular gatekeeper protein to suppress flowering genes until growing conditions are right. This study shows that nitrogen availability controls that gatekeeper through TOR kinase signaling: when nitrogen is ample, TOR phosphorylates the EBS protein to keep it stable and flowering genes quiet; when nitrogen runs low, EBS degrades and plants bolt early.
Abstract Preview
Original paper
Nitrogen-TOR targets a bivalent chromatin reader to modulate floral transition.
Nitrogen is an essential nutrient vital for plant health and productivity. How plants integrate nutrient signals and epigenome dynamics to modulate transcription and developmental transition remain...
open_in_new Read full abstractAbstract copyright held by the original publisher.
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