Key message
Overview of the current understanding of the molecular mechanisms that regulate meristem activity in the CMM compared to the SAM.
Abstract
Meristems are undifferentiated cells responsible for post-embryonic plant development. The meristems are able to form new organs continuously by carefully balancing between stem cell proliferation and cell differentiation. The plant stem cell niche in each meristem harbors the stem cells that are important to maintain each meristem. The shoot apical meristem (SAM) produces all above-parts of a plant and the molecular mechanisms active in the SAM are actively studied since many years, and models are available. During the reproductive phase of the plant, the inflorescence meristem gives rise to floral meristems, which give rise to the flowers. During floral development, the gynoecium forms that contains a new meristem inside, called the carpel margin meristem (CMM). In Arabidopsis, the gynoecium consists out of two fused carpels, where the CMM forms along the fused carpel margins. In this review, we focus on the molecular mechanisms taking place in the CMM, and we discuss similarities and differences found in the SAM.
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Acknowledgements
We apologize to all authors whose work we could not include in this review owing to space limitations. We thank the three anonymous reviewers for their comments. JIRO was supported by the Mexican National Council of Science and Technology (CONACyT) with a Ph.D. fellowship (210085). Work in the SDF laboratory was financed by the CONACyT Grants CB-2012-177739 and FC-2015-2/1061. SDF acknowledges the Marcos Moshinsky Foundation and the European Union H2020-MSCA-RISE-2015 Project ExpoSEED (Grant No. 691109).
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Reyes-Olalde, J.I., de Folter, S. Control of stem cell activity in the carpel margin meristem (CMM) in Arabidopsis. Plant Reprod 32, 123–136 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00497-018-00359-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00497-018-00359-0