TOPLESS Regulates Apical Embryonic Fate in Arabidopsis

Abstract

The embryos of seed plants develop with an apical shoot pole and a basal root pole. In Arabidopsis , the topless-1 ( tpl-1 ) mutation transforms the shoot pole into a second root pole. Here, we show that TPL resembles known transcriptional corepressors and that tpl-1 acts as a dominant negative mutation for multiple TPL-related proteins. Mutations in the putative coactivator HISTONE ACETYLTRANSFERASE GNAT SUPERFAMILY1 suppress the tpl-1 phenotype. Mutations in HISTONE DEACETYLASE19 , a putative corepressor, increase the penetrance of tpl-1 and display similar apical defects. These data point to a transcriptional repression mechanism that prevents root formation in the shoot pole during Arabidopsis embryogenesis.