MKP1 acts as a key modulator of stomatal development

The MAPK signaling cascade is universal among eukaryotes and mediates a variety of environmental and developmental responses. Two Arabidopsis MAPKs, MPK3 and MPK6, have been shown to be activated by various stimuli and suggested as a convergence point of different signaling pathways. It is known that these MAPKs, MPK3/MPK6, control the discrete stages of stomatal development in Arabidopsis, but how they are regulated and how the same MAPK components can achieve signaling specificity is largely unknown. We recently demonstrated that MAP Kinase Phosphatase 1 (MKP1) promotes stomatal differentiation by suppressing activation of MPK3/MPK6 in the stomatal lineage. By expressing MKP1 in discrete stomatal precursor cell types, we further identified that MKP1 plays an important role at the early stage of stomatal development for the cell fate transition leading to stomatal differentiation. While MKP1 was previously known as a key regulator of environmental stress responses, our data illustrate a novel role of MKP1 in plant development: it acts as one of the specificity-determining regulators of MAPK signaling to enforce proper stomatal development in Arabidopsis.