Light-dependent polyploidy control by a CUE protein variant in Arabidopsis

Endoreduplication is a special cell cycle that increases ploidy without cell and nuclear division. In plants endoreduplication is essential for development. We isolated a dominant Arabidopsis mutant from activation tagging lines that had increased polyploidy in darkness. This mutant, ipd1-1D (increased polyploidy level in darkness 1-1D), shows longer hypocotyls and increased ploidy levels only in dark-grown seedlings. The corresponding gene encodes a protein that contains a CUE domain variant. IPD1 is specifically expressed in mitotically dividing cells. Furthermore we show that blue and far-red light can suppress the ploidy increase in ipd1-1D and also suppress the reporter expression in IPD1-promoter beta-glucuronidase transgenic plants. These results suggest that IPD1 regulates the endocycle leading to hypocotyl elongation and this function is controlled by blue and far-red light.