The legume-specific transcription factor E1 controls leaf morphology in soybean
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Updated: Oct 13, 2025

A Simple Method for Isolation of Soybean Protoplasts and Application to Transient Gene Expression Analyses
Published on: January 25, 2018
Yongli Li1, Zhihong Hou2, Weiwei Li3
1Innovative Center of Molecular Genetics and Evolution, School of Life Sciences, Guangzhou University, Guangzhou, 516000, China.
Background:
The leaf is a determinate organ essential for photosynthesis, whose size and shape determine plant architecture and strongly affect agronomic traits. In soybean, the molecular mechanism of leaf development is not well understood. The flowering repressor gene E1, which encodes a legume-specific B3-like protein, is known to be the gene with the largest influence on soybean flowering and maturity. However, knowledge of its potential other functions remains poor.
Results:
Here, we identified a novel function of E1 protein in leaf development. Unifoliolate leaves of E1-overexpression (E1-OE) lines were smaller and curlier than those of wild type DongNong 50 (DN50) and Williams 82 (W82). Transverse histological sections showed disorganized cells and significantly elevated palisade tissue number, spongy tissue number, and bulliform cell number in E1-OE lines. Our results indicate that E1 binds to the promoters of the leaf- development-related CINCINNATA (CIN)-like TEOSINTE BRANCHED1/CYCLOIDEA/PROLIFERATING CELL FACTOR (TCP) transcription factor genes to negatively regulate their expression.
Conclusions:
Our findings identify E1 as an important new factor in soybean leaf development.
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