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Fruit development: miRNA pumps up the volume

Nature Plants volume 1, Article number: 15037 (2015) Cite this article

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Analysis of fruit development in Arabidopsis reveals how a four-component regulatory module, comprising a microRNA and three types of transcription factors, functions to control fruit size.

Plant cells have a natural propensity to expand due to their internal turgor pressure. The regulation of this growth tendency determines plant forms. The expansion of carpels, the female reproductive organs at the centre of flowers that mature into fruits, determines fruit size, be it the tiny fruits of wild tomato progenitors or the large fruits we slice or dice to eat. Fruit development is an interesting and important biological process, yet our understanding of the molecular mechanisms regulating this process is still fragmentary. In this issue of Nature Plants Ripoll et al. demonstrate that a series of positive and negative interactions between a microRNA (miRNA) gene and members of the well-known MADS, ARF and APETALA2 families of transcription factors play key roles in the growth of Arabidopsis fruit1.

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Figure 1: The transcription factors FUL and ARF8 physically associate to form a complex that binds to their respective binding sites (CArG and ARE) in the promoter of MIR172C.

References

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  1. Charles Gasser is in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology at the University of California-Davis, Davis, California 95616, USA.,

    Charles Gasser

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  1. Charles Gasser
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Correspondence to Charles Gasser.

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Gasser, C. Fruit development: miRNA pumps up the volume. Nature Plants 1, 15037 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nplants.2015.37

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nplants.2015.37

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