A novel cell-to-cell trafficking assay indicates that the KNOX homeodomain is necessary and sufficient for intercellular protein and mRNA trafficking

  1. Jae-Yean Kim1,2,3,
  2. Yeonggil Rim1,
  3. Jing Wang2, and
  4. David Jackson2,4
  1. 1Division of Applied Life Science (BK21 program), Environmental Biotechnology National Core Research Center, PMBBRC, Gyeongsang National University, Jinju 660-701, Korea; 2Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Cold Spring Harbor, New York 11724, USA

Abstract

Cell-to-cell trafficking of regulatory proteins is a novel mechanism for communication during cell fate specification in plants. Although several developmental proteins traffic cell-to-cell, no signals that are both necessary and sufficient for this function in developmental proteins have been described. We developed a novel trafficking assay using trichome rescue in Arabidopsis. Fusion to KNOTTED1 (KN1) conferred gain-of-trafficking function to the cell-autonomous GLABROUS1 (GL1) protein. We show that the KNOX homeodomain (HD) is necessary and sufficient for intercellular trafficking, identifying a novel function for the HD as the minimal sequence required for trafficking of KN1 and its associated mRNA.

Keywords

Footnotes

  • Article and publication are at http://www.genesdev.org/cgi/doi/10.1101/gad.332805.

  • Corresponding authors.

  • ↵3 E-MAIL kimjy{at}nongae.gsnu.ac.kr; FAX 82-55-759-9363.

  • ↵4 E-MAIL jacksond{at}cshl.edu; FAX (516) 367-8369.

    • Accepted February 18, 2005.
    • Received December 7, 2004.
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This Article

  1. doi: 10.1101/gad.332805 Genes & Dev. 19: 788-793 Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press

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