HD-ZIP Transcription Factors and Brassinosteroid Signaling Play a Role in Capitulum Patterning in Chrysanthemum.

Chrysanthemum is a genus in the Asteraceae family containing numerous cut flower varieties with high ornamental value. It owes its beauty to the composite flower head, which resembles a compact inflorescence. This structure is also known as a capitulum, in which many ray and disc florets are densely packed. The ray florets are localized at the rim, are male sterile, and have large colorful petals. The centrally localized disc florets develop only a small petal tube but produce fertile stamens and a functional pistil. Nowadays, varieties with more ray florets are bred because of their high ornamental value, but, unfortunately, this is at the expense of their seed setting. In this study, we confirmed that the disc:ray floret ratio is highly correlated to seed set efficiency, and therefore, we further investigated the mechanisms that underlie the regulation of the disc:ray floret ratio. To this end, a comprehensive transcriptomics analysis was performed in two acquired mutants with a higher disc:ray floret ratio. Among the differentially regulated genes, various potential brassinosteroid (BR) signaling genes and HD-ZIP class IV homeodomain transcription factors stood out. Detailed follow-up functional studies confirmed that reduced BR levels and downregulation of HD-ZIP IV gene Chrysanthemum morifolium PROTODERMAL FACTOR 2 (CmPDF2) result in an increased disc:ray floret ratio, thereby providing ways to improve seed set in decorative chrysanthemum varieties in the future.

Homologues of potato chromosome 5 show variable collinearity in the euchromatin, but dramatic absence of sequence similarity in the pericentromeric heterochromatin.

BACKGROUND: In flowering plants it has been shown that de novo genome assemblies of different species and genera show a significant drop in the proportion of alignable sequence. Within a plant species, however, it is assumed that different haplotypes of the same chromosome align well. In this paper we have compared three de novo assemblies of potato chromosome 5 and report on the sequence variation and the proportion of sequence that can be aligned. RESULTS: For the diploid potato clone RH89-039-16 (RH) we produced two linkage phase controlled and haplotype-specific assemblies of chromosome 5 based on BAC-by-BAC sequencing, which were aligned to each other and compared to the 52 Mb chromosome 5 reference sequence of the doubled monoploid clone DM 1-3 516 R44 (DM). We identified 17.0 Mb of non-redundant sequence scaffolds derived from euchromatic regions of RH and 38.4 Mb from the pericentromeric heterochromatin. For 32.7 Mb of the RH sequences the correct position and order on chromosome 5 was determined, using genetic markers, fluorescence in situ hybridisation and alignment to the DM reference genome. This ordered fraction of the RH sequences is situated in the euchromatic arms and in the heterochromatin borders. In the euchromatic regions, the sequence collinearity between the three chromosomal homologs is good, but interruption of collinearity occurs at nine gene clusters. Towards and into the heterochromatin borders, absence of collinearity due to structural variation was more extensive and was caused by hemizygous and poorly aligning regions of up to 450 kb in length. In the most central heterochromatin, a total of 22.7 Mb sequence from both RH haplotypes remained unordered. These RH sequences have very few syntenic regions and represent a non-alignable region between the RH and DM heterochromatin haplotypes of chromosome 5. CONCLUSIONS: Our results show that among homologous potato chromosomes large regions are present with dramatic loss of sequence collinearity. This stresses the need for more de novo reference assemblies in order to capture genome diversity in this crop. The discovery of three highly diverged pericentric heterochromatin haplotypes within one species is a novelty in plant genome analysis. The possible origin and cytogenetic implication of this heterochromatin haplotype diversity are discussed.