NBR1-mediated selective autophagy of ARF7 modulates root branching

Auxin orchestrates growth and developmental regulation in plants. For instance, auxin dictates root architecture via the Auxin Response Factor (ARF) family of transcription factors, which control lateral root (LR) formation. In Arabidopsis, ARF7 is essential for the specification of prebranch sites...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published inbioRxiv
Main Authors Ebstrup, Elise, Ansboel, Jeppe, Ana Paez Garcia, Culp, Henry, Chevalier, Jonathan, Clemmens, Pauline, Coll, Nuria S, Moreno-Risueno, Miguel Angel, Rodriguez, Eleazar
Format Paper
LanguageEnglish
Published Cold Spring Harbor Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press 17.11.2023
Subjects
Autophagy
Auxins
Branching
Decision making
Degradation
Gene expression
Pattern formation
Phagosomes
Rhythms
Transcription factors
Online AccessGet full text

Cover

More Information
Summary:Auxin orchestrates growth and developmental regulation in plants. For instance, auxin dictates root architecture via the Auxin Response Factor (ARF) family of transcription factors, which control lateral root (LR) formation. In Arabidopsis, ARF7 is essential for the specification of prebranch sites (PBS) generating LRs through gene expression oscillations and plays a pivotal role during LR initiation. Despite the importance of ARF7 in this process, there is a surprising lack of knowledge about how ARF7 turnover is regulated and how this contributes to root architecture patterning. Here, we show that ARF7 accumulates in autophagy mutants and is degraded through NBR1-dependent selective autophagy. Our data also indicates that the previously reported rhythmic changes to ARF7 abundance in roots are modulated via autophagy and might occur in other plant tissues. Additionally, we demonstrate that ARF7 and autophagy markers co-localization oscillates and can be modulated by auxin to trigger ARF7 turnover. Consistent with these findings we observed that autophagy deficiency leads to diminished oscillatory intensity, PBS establishment and reduced LR formation. In conclusion we report a novel role for autophagy during plant development, namely by enacting auxin-induced selective degradation of ARF7 to optimize periodic root branchingCompeting Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.Footnotes* We corrected a mistake in figure 6 in which the confocal pictures had been placed incorrectly We also corrected the label of the timpoints of figure EV3.
DOI:10.1101/2022.08.19.504407