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Regulation of stomatal movement by cortical microtubule organization in response to darkness and ABA signaling in Arabidopsis

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Abstract

Microtubule dynamics are essential for plant cell development and in producing responses to external stimuli. However, little is known about the regulation of microtubule dynamics or crosstalk between microtubule and stomatal movement. Here we identified microtubule reorganization as a crucial factor determining guard cell responses to dark and abscisic acid (ABA) signaling. As stomata opened, guard cells exhibited radially arranged cortical microtubules, which depolymerized into the cytosol when exposed to darkness and ABA. Suppression of microtubule disassembly by paclitaxel, a microtubule-stabilizing drug, significantly enhanced stomatal aperture under light, and partially blocked ABA- or darkness-induced stomatal closure. However, treatment with only the anti-microtubule drug, oryzalin, did not affect stomatal movement with or without external stimuli. Phosphatidic acid (PA) bound to a clade A type 2C protein phosphatase (PP2C), PP2CA, and deletion of PP2CA partially inhibited PA-induced microtubule depolymerization and stomatal closure. Moreover, microtubule reorganization was altered in the ABA-insensitive mutant pldα1, but not in the ABA-hypersensitive mutant pp2ca. We propose that a faithfully balanced reorganization of microtubules fulfills fundamental functions to enable the fast change of stomata in plant adaptive responses to developmental and environmental cues.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Ming Yuan (China Agricultural University) and Julian I. Schroeder (University of California) for kindly providing TUA6-GFP and pp2ca seeds, respectively. This work was supported by grants from the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province (BK20160720) for Y. Qu, the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31470364 and 31670263), and Fundamental Research Funds for Central Universities (KYZ201423) to Q. Zhang.

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    1. State Key Laboratory of Crop Genetics and Germplasm Enhancement, College of Life Sciences, Nanjing Agricultural University, Nanjing, 210095, People’s Republic of China

      Yana Qu, Ping Song, Yanwei Hu, Xin Jin, Qianru Jia, Xuedong Zhang, Long Chen & Qun Zhang

    2. Laboratory Centre of Life Science, Nanjing Agricultural University, Nanjing, 210095, People’s Republic of China

      Yana Qu

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    YQ, PS and QZ designed the research; YQ, PS, YH, XJ, QJ, ZX, and CL performed research; and YQ, PS and QZ analyzed data and wrote the paper. All authors read and approved the manuscript.

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    Correspondence to Qun Zhang.

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    Yana Qu and Ping Song have contributed equally to this work.

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    Qu, Y., Song, P., Hu, Y. et al. Regulation of stomatal movement by cortical microtubule organization in response to darkness and ABA signaling in Arabidopsis . Plant Growth Regul 84, 467–479 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10725-017-0353-5

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