There is no author summary for this article yet. Authors can add summaries to their articles on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.
Abstract
Development of multicellular organisms requires coordination of cell division and
differentiation across tissues. In plants, directional signaling, and implicitly cell
polarity, is proposed to participate in this coordination; however, mechanistic links
between intercellular signaling, cell polarity, and cellular organization remain unclear.
Here, we investigate the localization and function of INFLORESCENCE AND ROOT APICES
RECEPTOR KINASE (IRK) in root development. We find that IRK-GFP localizes to the outer
plasma membrane domain in endodermal cells but localizes to different domains in other
cell types. Our results suggest that IRK localization is informed locally by adjacent
cell types. irk mutants have excess cell divisions in the ground tissue stem cells
and endodermis, indicating IRK functions to maintain tissue organization through inhibition
of specific cell divisions. We predict that IRK perceives a directional cue that negatively
regulates these cell divisions, thus linking intercellular signaling and cell polarity
with the control of oriented cell divisions during development.