Pb. Talbert et al., THE REVOLUTA GENE IS NECESSARY FOR APICAL MERISTEM DEVELOPMENT AND FOR LIMITING CELL DIVISIONS IN THE LEAVES AND STEMS OF ARABIDOPSIS-THALIANA, Development, 121(9), 1995, pp. 2723-2735
The form of seed plants is determined by the growth of a number of mer
istems including apical meristems, leaf meristems and cambium layers,
We investigated five recessive mutant alleles of a gene REVOLUTA that
is required to promote the growth of apical meristems and to limit cel
l division in leaves and stems of Arabidopsis thaliana. REVOLUTA maps
to the bottom of the fifth chromosome, Apical meristems of both paracl
ades (axillary shoots) and flowers of revoluta mutants frequently fail
tocomplete normal development and form incomplete or abortive structur
es. The primary shoot apical meristem sometimes also arrests developme
nt early, Leaves, stems and floral organs, in contrast, grow abnormall
y large, We show that in the leaf epidermis this extra growth is due t
o extra cell divisions in the leaf basal meristem, The extent of leaf
growth is negatively correlated with the development of a paraclade in
the leaf axil. The thickened stems contain extra cell layers, arrange
d in rings, indicating that they may result from a cambium-like merist
em, These results suggest that the REVOLUTA gene has a role in regulat
ing the relative growth of apical and non-apical meristems in Arabidop
sis.