Kobe University

Kyushu University

The University of Tokyo

Summary

A research group led by Dr. Tomoyuki Furuya, Academic Support Staff (at the time of the research: Research Fellow, Department of Biological Sciences), Associate Professor Yuki Kondo (at the time of the research: Assistant Professor, Department of Biological Sciences), Graduate School of Science, Kobe University, Dr. Akiko Satake, Professor, Kyushu University, Dr. Masaru Tanokura, Project Associate Professor, Graduate School of Agricultural and Life Sciences, University of Tokyo, and Dr. Ko Yamori Associate Professor Ko Yamori (Associate Professor, Department of Biological Sciences) and his colleagues at the Graduate School of Agricultural and Life Sciences, the University of Tokyo, have successfully constructed a gene expression network characteristic of the vascular development process based on the "VISUAL" culture system that produces vascular cells from leaf cells, and have identified a number of factors involved in vascular stem cell regulation that have been identified as BES/BES/BES From this network, we discovered the BES/BZR transcription factor, BEH3, as a factor involved in the regulation of vascular stem cells. Furthermore, we have revealed a novel mechanism of stem cell maintenance in which BEH3 stabilizes the regulation of stem cell proliferation and differentiation by acting competitively with other members of the same BES/BZR transcription factor family.

Further studies to identify more stem cell regulators will lead to a better understanding of the molecular basis for the long-lasting maintenance of plant stem cells.

The results of this research were published on June 1 in The Plant Cell, an American plant science journal.

Figure: Overview of the construction of the vascular gene expression network. (purple) xylem cells, (green) sieve cells, (blue) vascular stem cells (A) Schematic diagram of vascular development in hypertrophic plant growth (B) Schematic diagram of the vascular cell differentiation induction system VISUAL. (C) Constructed vascular gene expression network. Each dot represents a gene and the lines indicate strong correlations.

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