The making of cauliflowers: the story of unsuccessful flowers
Abstract
The arrangement of plant organs, called phyllotaxis, produce remarkable spiral or whorled patterns. Cauliflowers present a unique phyllotaxis with a multitude of spirals over a wide range of scales. How such a self-similar fractal organization emerges from developmental mechanisms has remained elusive. Combining experimental assays with modeling, we found that cauliflowers arise due to the hysteresis of the bistable floral network that generates inflorescences imprinted by a transient floral state. We further show how additional mutations affecting meristem growth dynamics can induce the production of conical phyllotactic structures reminiscent of the conspicuous fractal Romanesco shape. This study reveals how the spectacular morphological modification of the inflorescences in cauliflower and Romanesco shape arises from the hysteresis of the genetic programs controlling inflorescence development.
Additional Information
The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. This version posted February 12, 2021. We thank Anne-Marie Chèvre, Teva Vernoux, Chloe Zubieta and Hicham Chahtane for advice, Dominique Tardy, Eric Giraud, Renaud Dumas and Vincent Martin (OBS, France) for providing cauliflower samples, Richard Immink (Wageningen, Netherlands), C. Ferrándiz (IBMCP; Spain), George Coupland (MPIPZ, Germany), Miguel Ángel Blázquez (IBMCP, Spain), Richard Amasino (UWM, USA) and the European Arabidopsis Stock Centre for providing seeds, Vincent Berger (CEA/DRF) for the Keyence microscope, Christine Lancelon-Pin (Plateau de microscopie électronique - ICMG. CERMAV-CNRS) for SEM experiments. This project received support from the INRA Caulimodel project (FP and CG), Inria for the Lab Morphogenetics project (CG), the ANR BBSRC Flower model project (FP and CG), the GRAL LabEX (ANR-10-LABX-49-01) with the frame of the CBH-EUR-GS (ANR-17-EURE-0003), the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia Innovación and FEDER (grant no. PGC2018-099232-B-I00)(FM). Author contributions: ChG and FP conceived the study ChG, EA, EF performed the modelling ASM, CaG, DB, FM, FP, GT, MK, MLM, VG designed and performed the plant experiments NP performed the confocal imaging experiment JL analysed the RNA-seq data ChG, FP and EA wrote the paper with the help of all authors. The authors declare no competing interests.Attached Files
Submitted - 2021.02.12.427428v1.full.pdf
Supplemental Material - media-1.pdf
Files
Name | Size | Download all |
---|---|---|
md5:586c3c32f834614852cad7ebacadeac0
|
737.3 kB | Preview Download |
md5:413bf08c5921793fc607e2fc6d3238eb
|
1.4 MB | Preview Download |
Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 108066
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20210216-122056927
- Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique
- ANR-10-LABX-49-01
- Agence Nationale pour la Recherche (ANR)
- ANR-17-EURE-0003
- Agence Nationale pour la Recherche (ANR)
- PGC2018-099232-B-I00
- Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (MCINN)
- Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional (FEDER)
- Created
-
2021-02-16Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
-
2021-11-16Created from EPrint's last_modified field