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First published online November 26, 2003; 10.1104/pp.103.025783 Plant Physiology 133:1726-1731 (2003) © 2003 American Society of Plant Biologists Ethylene Stimulates Endoreduplication But Inhibits Cytokinesis in Cucumber Hypocotyl Epidermis1Department of Biology, International Christian University, Mitaka, Tokyo 181-8585 Japan (H.D., H.K.); School of Agricultural Sciences, Nagoya University, Chikusa, Nagoya 464-8601 Japan (H.I.); and Plant Cell Biology Group, Research School of Biological Sciences, The Australian National University, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory 2601, Australia (G.O.W., H.K.)
The effects of ethylene on cell division are generally considered inhibitory. In this study, we demonstrate that transient ethylene exposure, while suppressing cytokinesis, stimulates DNA synthesis. We monitored DNA synthesis and cytokinesis in the epidermis of cucumber (Cucumis sativus) hypocotyls, an organ whose post-germination development involves strictly limited cell division. During exposure to ethylene, DNA synthesis, assessed by the incorporation of the thymidine homolog 5-bromo-2'-deoxyuridine, was detected in 20% of the epidermal cells, whereas DNA synthesis was nearly undetectable in normal air. Cytofluorometric analysis of nuclei in affected cells showed an up to 8-fold increase in DNA content. During this time, new cell plate formation was not detected. However, shortly after ethylene was removed, DNA content was rapidly restored to 2C (diploid) levels in all cells, and new cell plate formation dramatically increased. These results demonstrate that ethylene promotes DNA synthesis and its endoreduplication but inhibits cytokinesis, thereby maintaining some cells in G2 phase.
Ethylene regulates a wide variety of developmental processes in plants, from seedling growth to leaf and fruit senescence. In etiolated dicot seedlings, ethylene enhances tightening of the apical hook, suppresses elongation, and stimulates radial expansion of stem and root cells (Abeles et al., 1992
Abeles et al. (1992 We have now reported that transient ethylene exposure dramatically affects division polarity and cell fate in the epidermis of cucumber (Cucumis sativus) seedlings but that these effects are only manifested after the removal of ethylene (H. Kazama, H. Dan, H. Imaseki, and G.O. Wasteneys, unpublished data). During ethylene treatment, the number and positional arrangement of stomata and trichomes remain unchanged. However, removal of ethylene dramatically increases stoma and trichome numbers, generates abnormally oriented stomata, increases the number of cells in trichomes, and causes trichome branching. These results suggest that although cell division is apparently suppressed during ethylene exposure, cell division processes involved in the formation of stomata and trichomes are stimulated. Here, we demonstrate that ethylene exposure causes DNA endoreduplication and that subsequent removal of ethylene triggers rapid cytokinesis.
In this study, we documented DNA synthesis and cell division in the epidermis of cucumber hypocotyls during and after exposure to ethylene. Our previous study demonstrated that the stimulation of cell proliferation by transient exposure to ethylene was specific to stomatal and trichome progenitor cells (H. Kazama, H. Dan, H. Imeseki, and G.O. Wasteneys, unpublished data). We therefore measured relative DNA content and probed for DNA synthesis and cell plate formation using techniques that kept the hypocotyl epidermis intact. For this study, we exposed seedlings to ethylene for 24 to 48 h and then followed development over similar periods of time after the removal of ethylene. The 24- and 48-h treatment and recovery periods generated similar results, but 24-h treatments were preferred because these prevented excessive growth of the etiolated control seedlings, which tended to outgrow the containers.
We assessed DNA synthesis by detecting the incorporation of the thymidine analog 5-bromo-2'-deoxyuridine (BrdU) into nuclei. Immunofluorescence microscopy demonstrated that during treatment with ethylene, DNA synthesis took place in a significant number of nuclei, whereas control cells exposed to normal air rarely incorporated BrdU (Fig. 1). Trichome and stomata development is not equally distributed around the surface of the cucumber hypocotyl, which is square in profile, with some areas producing trichomes or stomata in greater abundance than others. Hair-form trichomes, for example, are most abundant at the hypocotyl corners. Careful examination of epidermal strips revealed that DNA synthesis occurred mainly in strips obtained from regions of the hypocotyl that generate stomata and/or trichomes in greatest abundance. The number of BrdU-labeled nuclei increased rapidly over the 24-h period of ethylene exposure (Fig. 2). Initiation of DNA synthesis during ethylene treatment was rapid; after 1 h, 9% of the epidermal cells showed DNA synthesis activity, and the frequency steadily increased until 10 h, when as many as 20% of nuclei had incorporated BrdU. However, even at the end of the 24-h exposure, there was no sign of nuclear division. Figure 2 also shows that in control plants, BrdU incorporation was almost undetectable over the same 24-h period. These results suggest that ethylene stimulated DNA synthesis in those epidermal cells that had retained the potential to divide, but that cytokinesis did not proceed as long as ethylene was present.
The lack of nuclear division during ethylene exposure suggested that endoreduplication had taken place. To confirm this, we measured relative nuclear DNA content of epidermal cells by the fluorescence intensity of 4',6-diamino-phenylindole (DAPI)-stained nuclei. Figure 3 shows frequency distribution histograms of relative nuclear DNA contents generated after background fluorescence intensity was normalized. Untreated control cells had 2C to 2.5C levels of relative DNA content (Fig. 3, A and C). During ethylene exposure, cells with 4C to 8C DNA content were observed after 24 h (Fig. 3B), and cells with up to 16C were observed after 48 h (Fig. 3D). After 24 h, 26% of the cells had a relative DNA content over 4C (Fig. 3B), and after 48 h, this increased to 35% (Fig. 3D). These results indicate that DNA synthesis observed during ethylene exposure was a result of endoreduplication and that in some cells, as many as three rounds of DNA duplication had taken place.
Callose accumulates during early cell plate formation, but levels decrease by late stages of cytokinesis (Samuels et al., 1995
To examine the fate of endoreduplicated nuclei formed during ethylene exposure, we assayed the distribution of DNA contents of epidermal cells 48 h after removal of ethylene. Cells near the base of the hypocotyl that were expanding rapidly when ethylene was applied underwent radial swelling and relatively little elongation during ethylene treatment. They generated the swollen base of the hypocotyl apparent after the removal of ethylene. In contrast, the cells still in the apical hook and sub-cotyledon regions during ethylene exposure elongated after the removal of ethylene so the upper part of the hypocotyl developed a slender morphology. Those cells in the apical and apical hook regions formed the new apical hook and the elongation zones of the hypocotyl, respectively, during the first 24 to 48 h in normal air. DNA content was measured in epidermal strips taken from both the upper, slender region and the lower, swollen region of hypocotyls. Results shown in Figure 6 indicate that although 35% of cells had 4C to 16C DNA content during exposure to ethylene (Fig. 3D), 48 h after the removal of ethylene, all of the epidermal cell nuclei throughout the length of the hypocotyls had a 2C level of DNA content.
The present study dealt with the effects of ethylene on nuclear DNA synthesis and cytokinesis, using cell biological techniques. The results clearly indicate that DNA synthesis was induced during ethylene exposure in a subset of epidermal cells from etiolated cucumber seedlings and that the frequency of DNA synthesizing cells in the epidermal cell population increased during ethylene treatment. Ethylene-stimulated DNA synthesis apparently results in endoreduplication because nuclear DNA content increased to as high as 16C after 48 h, and nuclear division during ethylene exposure was never detected despite extensive microscopical examination.
Earlier work demonstrated that ethylene suppresses cell division and mitotic DNA synthesis in apical meristems (Apelbaum and Burg, 1972 Our results imply that ethylene stimulates the transition from G1 to S phase in the cell cycle, but arrests the cell cycle at G2. In some cells, multiple endoreduplication by a short circuit between G2 and S phases apparently occurred during ethylene exposure. The affected cells mostly differentiated into either stomata (including stoma subsidiary cells) or trichomes, and their number dramatically increased after the removal of ethylene (H. Kazama, H. Dan, H. Imaseki, G.O. Wasteneys, unpublished data). It is therefore clear that some of the non-specialized epidermal cells that would not normally form stomata and trichome precursors must also be stimulated to reduplicate DNA, eventually to divide and differentiate into stomata and/or trichomes.
The results reported here differ from those reported for pea seedlings (Burg et al., 1971 The continued cell division documented after removing ethylene indicates that the ethylene-affected cells acquire a capacity for further DNA synthesis well beyond the period of ethylene treatment. Cells that had apparently completed cytokinesis were often observed in cell clusters (Fig. 4B). Because multiply endoreduplicated cells are quickly reduced to 2C DNA levels after ethylene removal, cytokinesis of those cells probably occurred in rapid succession. However, the frequency of multiply endoreduplicated nuclei appears to be less than the frequency of cell clusters. Thus it appears that cells formed by cytokinesis of endoreduplicated (or G2 arrested) cells retain a capacity for further rounds of the cell cycle after the removal of ethylene, indicating that ethylene also has a residual effect on the regulatory mechanism of transition from G1 to S phase. In another article, we show that transient ethylene exposure also induced formation of multicellular protuberances terminating in a single stoma (H. Kazama, H. Dan, H. Imaseki, G.O. Wasteneys, unpublished data). The main body of these protuberances may contain thousands of smaller cells that apparently originate from stomatal subsidiary cells.
The results presented here demonstrate that ethylene can have a regulatory role on the cell cycle progression in progenitor cells for stomatal complexes and trichomes. In these progenitor cells, ethylene induces the transition from G1 to S phase, and inhibits the progression of G2 phase to M phase. Knowledge of factors involved in the regulation of the cell cycle in plants is accumulating, and a model of the plant cell cycle has recently been presented (Meijer and Murray, 2001
Plant Materials and Ethylene Treatment Seeds of cucumber (Cucumis sativus L. cv Aonagajibai, purchased from Takii Seed [Kyoto]) were placed on 0.35% (w/v) agar medium (Bacto-agar, Difco, Detroit) and grown, four seedlings per 825-mL glass container, as described (H. Kazama, H. Dan, H. Imaseki, and G.O. Wasteneys, unpublished data). Seedlings were grown in the dark at 25°C ± 1°C in a growth cabinet (Koitotron KG206, Koito Industries, Tokyo; Sherer CEL15 cabinet, Sherer-Pennant, Seven Hill, NSW, Australia).
To stimulate stoma and trichome differentiation in hypocotyls, 2-d-old seedlings were irradiated with red light filtered through a Rohm and Haas no. 2444 filter (4.5 x 10-5 J cm-2 s-1 at the plant level) for 30 min (Kazama and Mineyuki, 1997
Nuclei in the process of DNA synthesis were visualized by their incorporation of BrdU and its fluorescent immunochemical staining (Gratzner, 1982 Microscopic observation was made with a New Vanox microscope (AHB S-F, Olympus, Tokyo) with Epifluorescence Optics with a standard filter set and a D Plan Apo UV 20x objective lens. Excitation of fluorescein isothiocyanate and Hoechst 33258 was made with blue and UV filters, respectively, and photographic images were taken. Hoechst 33258-stained and BrdU-stained nuclei were separately counted on the photographic images that covered more than 100 nuclei. Measurement was made with at least five epidermal strips taken from different hypocotyls for each treatment. Frequency of DNA synthesis was calculated by the following equation: Frequency of DNA synthesis (%) = [(no. of BrdU-stained nuclei)/(Hoechst-stained total nuclei)] x 100.
Epidermal strips were treated with 30 to 50 µL of 100 ng mL-1 DAPI solution (Hamada and Fujita, 1983
Cells under cytokinesis were identified by the staining of newly formed cell plates with aniline blue, a specific dye for
Upon request, all novel materials described in this publication will be made available in a timely manner for noncommercial research purposes, subject to the requisite permission from any third-party owners of all or parts of the material. Obtaining any permissions will be the responsibility of the requestor.
We thank Dr. P.C.L. John (The Australian National University) for valuable discussion. Received April 27, 2003; returned for revision June 26, 2003; accepted August 18, 2003.
Article, publication date, and citation information can be found at www.plantphysiol.org/cgi/doi/10.1104/pp.103.025783.
1 This work was supported by the Ministry of Education of Japan (grant-in-aid 11874120 to H.K.) and by the Australian Research Council Discovery Project (grant no.DP0208872 to G.O.W.). * Corresponding author; e-mail kazama{at}icu.ac.jp; fax 81-422-33-1449.
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