Plant Developmental Genetics, Hormone Signaling
Land plants' success to colonize different continental environments lies in part in their ability to produce seeds: structures encapsulating plant embryos, keeping them in an inert and osmotolerant state. The first step towards the adult phase of the plant is that of seed germination, a process whereby the embryo develops into a photosynthetic young seedling.
Since the embryo abandons a highly protected state, it is not surprising that germination is controlled by the environmental conditions faced by the seed. Thus, germination responds to the quality of light (e.g. favorable sun light vs unfavorable canopy light) or water (e.g. fresh vs salty water). Environmental cues determine the levels of the phytohormones gibberrellic acid (GA) and abscisic acid (ABA). GA is necessary to initiate germination by promoting the destruction of germination repressors; the DELLA factors RGL2, GAI and RGA. ABA is synthesized upon osmotic stress and blocks germination by inducing the expression of germination repressors; the transcription factors ABI3 and ABI5.
Our work mainly focuses on understanding how GA- and ABA-dependent control of seed germination is coordinated in response to environmental cues.
The Arabidopsis endosperm is a temperature-sensing tissue that implements seed thermoinhibition through phyB
Urszula Piskurewicz; Maria Sentandreu; Mayumi Iwasaki; Gaëtan Glauser; Luis Lopez-Molina
Nature Communications 2023-03-07 | Journal article, DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-36903-4
Parental and Environmental Control of Seed Dormancy in Arabidopsis thaliana.
Iwasaki M; Penfield S; Luis Lopez-Molina
Annual review of plant biology, 2022-02-09 | DOI: 10.1146/annurev-arplant-102820-090750
Arabidopsis thaliana Mature Endosperm Dissection and Isolation of Genomic DNA from Mature Seed Tissues.
Mayumi Iwasaki; Luis Lopez-Molina
Methods in molecular biology (Clifton, N.J.) 2021-01-01 | Journal article, DOI: 10.1007/978-1-0716-1134-0_22
Prof. Dr. Luis Lopez-Molina
University of Geneva
Department of Plant Sciences
1211 Geneva
Tel: +41 (0)22 379 32 06