Florigen-producing cells express FPF1-LIKE PROTEIN 1 that accelerates flowering and stem growth in long days with sunlight red/far-red ratio in Arabidopsis.

Seasonal changes in spring induce flowering by expressing the florigen, FLOWERING LOCUS T (FT), in Arabidopsis. FT is expressed in unique phloem companion cells with unknown characteristics. The question of which genes are co-expressed with FT and whether they have roles in flowering remains elusive. Through tissue-specific translatome analysis, we discovered that under long-day conditions with the natural sunlight red/far-red ratio, the FT-producing cells express a gene encoding FPF1-LIKE PROTEIN 1 (FLP1). The master FT regulator, CONSTANS (CO), controls FLP1 expression, suggesting FLP1's involvement in the photoperiod pathway. FLP1 promotes early flowering independently of FT, is active in the shoot apical meristem, and induces the expression of SEPALLATA 3 (SEP3), a key E-class homeotic gene. Unlike FT, FLP1 facilitates inflorescence stem elongation. Our cumulative evidence indicates that FLP1 may act as a mobile signal. Thus, FLP1 orchestrates floral initiation together with FT and promotes inflorescence stem elongation during reproductive transitions.

A conserved function of corepressors is to nucleate assembly of the transcriptional preinitiation complex.

The plant corepressor TPL is recruited to diverse chromatin contexts, yet its mechanism of repression remains unclear. Previously, we have leveraged the fact that TPL retains its function in a synthetic transcriptional circuit in the yeast model Saccharomyces cerevisiae to localize repressive function to two distinct domains. Here, we employed two unbiased whole genome approaches to map the physical and genetic interactions of TPL at a repressed locus. We identified SPT4, SPT5 and SPT6 as necessary for repression with the SPT4 subunit acting as a bridge connecting TPL to SPT5 and SPT6. We also discovered the association of multiple additional constituents of the transcriptional preinitiation complex at TPL-repressed promoters, specifically those involved in early transcription initiation events. These findings were validated in yeast and plants through multiple assays, including a novel method to analyze conditional loss of function of essential genes in plants. Our findings support a model where TPL nucleates preassembly of the transcription activation machinery to facilitate rapid onset of transcription once repression is relieved.

Stretching single DNA molecules to demonstrate high-force capabilities of holographic optical tweezers.

The well calibrated force-extension behaviour of single double-stranded DNA molecules was used as a standard to investigate the performance of phase-only holographic optical tweezers at high forces. Specifically, the characteristic overstretch transition at 65 pN was found to appear where expected, demonstrating (1) that holographic optical trap calibration using thermal fluctuation methods is valid to high forces; (2) that the holographic optical traps are harmonic out to >250 nm of 2.1 mum particle displacement; and (3) that temporal modulations in traps induced by the spatial light modulator (SLM) do not affect the ability of optical traps to hold and steer particles against high forces. These studies demonstrate a new high-force capability for holographic optical traps achievable by SLM technologies.

Subcellular Min oscillations as a single-cell reporter of the action of polycations, protamine, and gentamicin on Escherichia coli.

BACKGROUND: In Escherichia coli, MinD-GFP fusion proteins show rapid pole to pole oscillations. The objective was to investigate the effects of extracellular cations on the subcellular oscillation of cytoplasmic MinD within Escherichia coli. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: We exposed bacteria to the extracellular cations Ca(++), Mg(++), the cationic antimicrobial peptide (CAP) protamine, and the cationic aminoglycoside gentamicin. We found rapid and substantial increases in the average MinD oscillation periods in the presence of any of these polyvalent cations. For Ca(++) and Mg(++) the increases in period were transient, even with a constant extracellular concentration, while increases in period for protamine or gentamicin were apparently irreversible. We also found striking interdependence in the action of the small cations with protamine or gentamicin, distorted oscillations under the action of intermediate levels of gentamicin and Ca(++), and reversible freezing of the Min oscillation at high cationic concentrations. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: Intracellular Min oscillations provide a fast single-cell reporter of bacterial response to extracellular polycations, which can be explained by the penetration of polycations into cells.