Phloem fibres as motors of gravitropic behaviour of flax plants: level of transcriptome

Abstract

Restoration of stem vertical position after plant inclination is a widely spread version of plant orientation in accordance with gravity vector direction. Gravitropic behaviour of flax plants involves the formation of curvature in stem region that has ceased elongation long in advance of stem inclination. The important participants of such behaviour are phloem fibres with constitutively formed tertiary cell wall (G-layer). We performed the large-scale transcriptome profiling of phloem fibres isolated from pulling and opposite sides of gravitropic curvature and compared with control plant fibres. Significant changes in transcript abundance take place for genes encoding proteins of several ion channels, transcription factors and other regulating elements. The largest number of upregulated genes belonged to the cell wall category; many of those were specifically upregulated in fibres of pulling stem side. The obtained data permit to suggest the mechanism of fibre participation in gravitropic reaction that involves the increase of turgor pressure and the rearrangements of cell wall structure in order to improve contractile properties, and to identify the regulatory elements that operate specifically in the fibres of the pulling stem side making gelatinous phloem fibres an important element of gravitropic response in herbaceous plants.