TY - JOUR
T1 - Developmental Control and Plasticity of Fruit and Seed Dimorphism in Aethionema arabicum
AU - Lenser, Teresa
AU - Graeber, Kai
AU - Cevik, Özge Selin
AU - Adigüzel, Nezaket
AU - Dönmez, Ali A.
AU - Grosche, Christopher
AU - Kettermann, Marcel
AU - Mayland-Quellhorst, Sara
AU - Merai, Zsuzsanna
AU - Mohammadin, Setareh
AU - Nguyen, Thu-Phuong
AU - Rümpler, Florian
AU - Schulze, Christina
AU - Sperber, Katja
AU - Steinbrecher, Tina
AU - Wiegand, Nils
AU - Strnad, Miroslav
AU - Mittelsten Scheid, Ortrun
AU - Rensing, Stefan
AU - Schranz, Michael Eric
AU - Theißen, Günter
AU - Mummenhoff, Klaus
AU - Leubner-Metzger, Gerhard
N1 - The general SeedAdapt Data Management file is uploaded. For this article all the data are included in the paper plus the supplementary file. Both, the paper and the supplementary file will be available for download from the publishers website and from the RHUL PURE website via OpenAccess as soon as the manuscript is accepted.
PY - 2016/11
Y1 - 2016/11
N2 - Understanding how plants cope with changing habitats is a timely and important topic in plant research. Phenotypic plasticity describes the capability of a genotype to produce different phenotypes when exposed to different environmental conditions. In contrast, the constant production of a set of distinct phenotypes by one genotype mediates bet-hedging, a strategy that reduces the temporal variance in fitness at the expense of a lowered arithmetic mean fitness. Both phenomena are thought to represent important adaptation strategies to unstable environments. However, little is known about the underlying mechanisms of these phenomena, partly due to the lack of suitable model systems. We used phylogenetic and comparative analyses of fruit and seed anatomy, biomechanics, physiology and environmental responses to study fruit and seed heteromorphism, a typical morphological basis of a bet-hedging strategy of plants, in the annual Brassicaceae Aethionema arabicum. Our results indicate that heteromorphism evolved twice within the Aethionemeae, including once for the monophyletic annual Aethionema clade. The dimorphism of Ae. arabicum is associated with several anatomic, biomechanical, gene expression and physiological differences between the fruit and seed morphs. However, fruit ratios and numbers change in response to different environmental conditions. Therefore, the life-history strategy of Ae. arabicum appears to be a blend of bet-hedging and plasticity. Together with the available genomic resources, our results pave the way to use this species in future studies intended to unravel the molecular control of heteromorphism and plasticity.
AB - Understanding how plants cope with changing habitats is a timely and important topic in plant research. Phenotypic plasticity describes the capability of a genotype to produce different phenotypes when exposed to different environmental conditions. In contrast, the constant production of a set of distinct phenotypes by one genotype mediates bet-hedging, a strategy that reduces the temporal variance in fitness at the expense of a lowered arithmetic mean fitness. Both phenomena are thought to represent important adaptation strategies to unstable environments. However, little is known about the underlying mechanisms of these phenomena, partly due to the lack of suitable model systems. We used phylogenetic and comparative analyses of fruit and seed anatomy, biomechanics, physiology and environmental responses to study fruit and seed heteromorphism, a typical morphological basis of a bet-hedging strategy of plants, in the annual Brassicaceae Aethionema arabicum. Our results indicate that heteromorphism evolved twice within the Aethionemeae, including once for the monophyletic annual Aethionema clade. The dimorphism of Ae. arabicum is associated with several anatomic, biomechanical, gene expression and physiological differences between the fruit and seed morphs. However, fruit ratios and numbers change in response to different environmental conditions. Therefore, the life-history strategy of Ae. arabicum appears to be a blend of bet-hedging and plasticity. Together with the available genomic resources, our results pave the way to use this species in future studies intended to unravel the molecular control of heteromorphism and plasticity.
KW - Aethionema arabicum
KW - bet-hedging
KW - fruit dimorphism
KW - heteromorphism
KW - life-history strategy
KW - model species
KW - phenotypic plasticity
KW - seed dimorphism
UR - http://www.plantphysiol.org/content/172/3/1691.abstract
U2 - 10.1104/pp.16.00838
DO - 10.1104/pp.16.00838
M3 - Article
SN - 0032-0889
VL - 172
SP - 1691
EP - 1707
JO - Plant physiology
JF - Plant physiology
IS - 3
ER -