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Characterization of gibberellin-signalling elements during plum fruit ontogeny defines the essentiality of gibberellin in fruit development

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Abstract

Fruit growth is a coordinated, complex interaction of cell division, differentiation and expansion. Gibberellin (GA) involvement in the reproductive events is an important aspect of GA effects. Perennial fruit-trees such as plum (Prunus salicina L.) have distinct features that are economically important and provide opportunities to dissect specific GA mechanisms. Currently, very little is known on the molecular mechanism(s) mediating GA effects on fruit development. Determination of bioactive GA content during plum fruit ontogeny revealed that GA1 and GA4 are critical for fruit growth and development. Further, characterization of several genes involved in GA-signalling showed that their transcriptional regulation are generally GA-dependent, confirming their involvement in GA-signalling. Based on these results, a model is presented elucidating how the potential association between GA and other hormones may contribute to fruit development. PslGID1 proteins structure, Y2H and BiFC assays indicated that plum GA-receptors can form a complex with AtDELLA-repressors in a GA-dependent manner. Moreover, phenotypical-, molecular- and GA-analyses of various Arabidopsis backgrounds ectopically expressing PslGID1 sequences provide evidence on their role as active GA-signalling components that mediate GA-responsiveness. Our findings support the critical contribution of GA alone or in association with other hormones in mediating plum fruit growth and development.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Dr. Stephen G. Thomas for providing gid1a-1/gid1c-1 double mutant, Dr. Stanton Gelvin for providing the EYFP vectors. We also thank the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs (OMAFRA) and Early Researchers Award of the Ontario Ministry of Innovation for financial assistance. We thank Dr. Bouzayen for help with subcellular localization experiment.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Plant Agriculture, University of Guelph, 4890 Victoria Av. N., P.O. Box 7000, Vineland Station, ON, L0R 2E0, Canada

    Islam El-Sharkawy, Sherif Sherif, Kamal Abubaker & Subramanian Jayasankar

  2. Faculty of Agriculture, Damanhour University, Damanhour, Egypt

    Islam El-Sharkawy & Sherif Sherif

  3. Department of Biological Sciences, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada

    Walid El Kayal

  4. Faculty of Agriculture, University of Alexandria, Alexandria, Egypt

    Walid El Kayal

  5. Department of Biological Sciences, Brock University, St. Catharines, ON, Canada

    Abdullah Mahboob

  6. Department of Biological Sciences, National University of Singapore, Singapore, 117543, Singapore

    Pratibha Ravindran, Pavithra A. Jyothi-Prakash & Prakash P. Kumar

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  1. Islam El-Sharkawy
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  2. Sherif Sherif
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  3. Walid El Kayal
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  4. Abdullah Mahboob
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  5. Kamal Abubaker
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  6. Pratibha Ravindran
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  7. Pavithra A. Jyothi-Prakash
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  9. Subramanian Jayasankar
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Correspondence to Subramanian Jayasankar.

Additional information

PslGID1b (JX569804); gPslGID1b (JX569802); PslGID1c (JX569805); gPslGID1c (JX569803); PslGA3ox1 (JX569806).

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El-Sharkawy, I., Sherif, S., El Kayal, W. et al. Characterization of gibberellin-signalling elements during plum fruit ontogeny defines the essentiality of gibberellin in fruit development. Plant Mol Biol 84, 399–413 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11103-013-0139-8

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