Seminars

In the shoot apical meristem, a population of pluripotent stem cells gives rise to all aerial organs throughout the plant’s life, which in extreme cases can last for centuries. Although much is known about the maintenance of the stem cell pool, many processes are poorly understood. Forward genetic mutant screens in Arabidopsis provided only a limited number of loci involved in stem cell regulation, possibly due to genetic redundancy. To circumvent this problem, we performed several screens for genetic modifiers in the different stem cell mutants. In addition to novel mutations in known meristem regulators, we identified a large set genes not implied previously in stem cell regulation, making accessible to study functions previously hidden by genetic redundancy. A functional study of candidate genes will be presented.
We gratefully acknowledge funding from the DFG (SFB592, ERA-PG) and the BMBF
(FRYSIS program).