First published online February 27, 2003; 10.1104/pp.014605
Plant Physiol, March 2003, Vol. 131, pp. 1258-1269
Sterols Regulate Development and Gene Expression in
Arabidopsis1
Jun-Xian
He,2
Shozo
Fujioka,
Tsai-Chi
Li,
Shin Gene
Kang,
Hideharu
Seto,
Suguru
Takatsuto,
Shigeo
Yoshida, and
Jyan-Chyun
Jang*
Department of Horticulture and Crop Science, The Ohio State
University, Columbus, Ohio 43210 (J.-X.H., T.-C.L., S.G.K.,
J.-C.J.); RIKEN (The Institute of Physical and Chemical Research),
Wako-shi, Saitama 351-0198, Japan (S.F., H.S., S.Y.); and Department
of Chemistry, Joetsu University of Education, Joetsu-shi, Niigata
943-8512, Japan (S.T.)
Sterols are important not only for structural components of
eukaryotic cell membranes but also for biosynthetic precursors of
steroid hormones. In plants, the diverse functions of sterol-derived brassinosteroids (BRs) in growth and development have been investigated rigorously, yet little is known about the regulatory roles of other
phytosterols. Recent analysis of Arabidopsis fackel
(fk) mutants and cloning of the FK gene
that encodes a sterol C-14 reductase have indicated that sterols play a
crucial role in plant cell division, embryogenesis, and development.
Nevertheless, the molecular mechanism underlying the regulatory role of
sterols in plant development has not been revealed. In this report, we demonstrate that both sterols and BR are active regulators of plant
development and gene expression. Similar to BR, both typical (sitosterol and stigmasterol) and atypical (8, 14-diene sterols accumulated in fk mutants) sterols affect the expression
of genes involved in cell expansion and cell division. The regulatory
function of sterols in plant development is further supported by a
phenocopy of the fk mutant using a sterol C-14 reductase
inhibitor, fenpropimorph. Although fenpropimorph impairs cell expansion
and affects gene expression in a dose-dependent manner, neither effect
can be corrected by applying exogenous BR. These results provide strong
evidence that sterols are essential for normal plant growth and
development and that there is likely a BR-independent sterol response
pathway in plants. On the basis of the expression of endogenous
FK and a reporter gene
FK:: -glucuronidase, we have
found that FK is up-regulated by several
growth-promoting hormones including brassinolide and auxin, implicating
a possible hormone crosstalk between sterol and other hormone-signaling pathways.
1
This work was supported by the U.S. Department
of Agriculture (grant no. 2002-35304-12500 to J.-C.J.). Salaries
and research support was provided by state and federal funds
appropriated to the Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center,
The Ohio State University. This is manuscript no. HCS 01-17.
2
Present address: Carnegie Institution of Washington,
Department of Plant Biology, 260 Panama Street, Stanford, CA 94305.
*
Corresponding author; e-mail jang.40{at}osu.edu; fax
614-292-8496.
© 2003 American Society of Plant Biologists
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