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Gametophyte differentiation and imprinting control in plants: Crosstalk between RBR and chromatin
Amal J Johnston1, Wilhelm Gruissem
1Department of Biology; Plant Biotechnology; ETH Zurich; Zurich, Switzerland.
Abstract:
The Retinoblastoma (pRb) pathway has been implicated as a convergent regulatory unit in the control of cell cycle and disease. We have shown that a crosstalk between RETINOBLASTOMA RELATED (RBR), the Arabidopsis homologue of pRb, and the genes encoding proteins of the chromatin complexes involved in DNA or histone methylation, controls gametophytic and post-fertilization differentiation events and a subset of imprinting effects. We describe here a plausible model that incorporates several components of the plant Retinoblastoma pathway, thus offering a novel paradigm that merges the traditional cell cycle and the chromatin components in the control of cell differentiation and imprinting.
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