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Negative gravitropism in plant roots

Nature Plants volume 2, Article number: 16155 (2016) Cite this article

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Abstract

Plants are capable of orienting their root growth towards gravity in a process termed gravitropism, which is necessary for roots to grow into soil, for water and nutrient acquisition and to anchor plants. Here we show that root gravitropism depends on the novel protein, NEGATIVE GRAVITROPIC RESPONSE OF ROOTS (NGR). In both Medicago truncatula and Arabidopsis thaliana, loss of NGR reverses the direction of root gravitropism, resulting in roots growing upward.

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Figure 1: M. truncatula ngr mutants.
Figure 2: A. thaliana ngr mutants.

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Acknowledgements

We thank A. Laxmi and Y. Tang for the microarray experiments, G. Li for Medicago crossing, E. Blancaflor for microscopy, X. Cheng and J. Wen for reverse genetics screen. We thank K. Mysore for providing Medicago Tnt1 lines and ABRC for Arabidopsis T-DNA lines. Funding for Medicago genetic resources was provided by National Science Foundation (IOS-1127155) to R. C. Funding of this work was provided by The Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation, Inc.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Plant Biology Division, The Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation, Ardmore, 73401, Oklahoma, USA

    Liangfa Ge & Rujin Chen

Authors
  1. Liangfa Ge
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  2. Rujin Chen
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Contributions

L.G. and R.C. designed and conducted experiments, collected data, performed data analyses and wrote the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Rujin Chen.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Figures 1–10, Supplementary Tables 1–3. (PDF 5306 kb)

Supplementary Video 1

Root gravitropic responses of wild-type and atngr1,2,3 mutants. (MP4 12401 kb)

Supplementary Video 2

Root tip curvature responses of wild-type and atngr1,2,3 under gravistimulation. (MP4 3371 kb)

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Ge, L., Chen, R. Negative gravitropism in plant roots. Nature Plants 2, 16155 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nplants.2016.155

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