Plant Cell Monogr (9)
D.P.S. Verma and Z. Hong: Cell Division Control in Plants
DOI 10.1007/7089_2007_120/Published online: 11 July 2007
©Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007
Transcriptional Control of the Plant Cell Cycle
Peter Doerner
Institute of Molecular Plant Science, School of Biological Sciences,
Daniel Rutherford Building, King’s Buildings, University of Edinburgh,
Edinburgh EH9 3JH, UK
[email protected]
AbstractProgression through the eukaryotic cell cycle is driven and controlled by in-
terlocked oscillating mechanisms, including reversible protein phosphorylation, protein
degradation and temporally regulated gene expression. Advances in cell synchronization
techniques have enabled the genome-wide characterization of temporally regulated gene
expression patterns in Arabidopsis, but the cognate transcription factors remain largely
unknown. In other eukaryotic model organisms, the network components involved in
orchestrating cell cycle phase-specific gene expression are being identified and their reg-
ulatory logic delineated. This chapter reviews progress in our understanding of cell cycle
regulated gene expression in plants.
1
Introduction and Background
Progression through the eukaryotic cell cycle is controlled by several mechan-
isms whose activity varies periodically with cell cycle phase. These oscillating
regulatory mechanisms are involved in controlling all aspects of cell cycle
progression, including: commitment, directionality, arrest in the event of
DNA damage, incomplete replication or unattached spindles and responsiv-
ity to the cellular environment. The best studied of these mechanisms are
reversible protein phosphorylation, protein degradation and temporally reg-
ulated gene expression, but in plants there are further oscillatory processes,
such as cytokinin hormone metabolism, that likely contribute to cell cycle
control.
In this chapter, I will focus on genome-wide studies of cell cycle regulated
gene expression and the mechanisms that underpin periodic, cell cycle phase-
dependent changes in gene expression. I will emphasize the transcriptional
regulation ofregulatorygenes that participate in the control of cell cycle pro-
gression, e.g. cyclins, over the phase-specific expression ofstructuralgenes,
for example histones, which are required for the appropriate execution of cell
cycle-dependent events at specific times during the cycle. This distinction
does not preclude the parsimonious use of some factors in both types of pro-
cesses, where the same factor may interact with different partners on distinct
promoters.