Regulation of cell division in higher plants. Final technical report

Research in the latter part of the grant period was divided into two parts: (1) expansion of the macromolecular tool kit for studying plant cell division; (2) experiments in which the roles played by plant cell cycle regulators were to be cast in the light of the emerging yeast and animal cell paradigm for molecular control of the mitotic cycle. The first objectives were accomplished to a very satisfactory degree. With regard to the second part of the project, we were driven to change our objectives for two reasons. First, the families of cell cycle control genes that we cloned encoded such closely related members that the prospects for success at raising distinguishing antisera against each were sufficiently dubious as to be impractical. Epitope tagging is not feasible in Pisum sativum, our experimental system, as this species is not realistically transformable. Therefore, differentiating the roles of diverse cyclins and cyclin-dependent kinases was problematic. Secondly, our procedure for generating mitotically synchronized pea root meristems for biochemical studies was far too labor intensive for the proposed experiments. We therefore shifted our objectives to identifying connections between the conserved proteins of the cell cycle engine and factors that interface it with plant physiology and development. In this, we have obtained some very exciting results