Genetic analysis of organ fusion in Arabidopsis thaliana

Postgenital organ fusion occurs most commonly during reproductive development and is important in many angiosperms during genesis of the carpel. Although a number of mutants have been described that manifest ectopic organ fusion, little is known about the genes involved in regulating this process. In this article we describe the characterization of a collection of 29 Arabidopsis mutants showing an organ fusion phenotype. Mapping and complementation analyses revealed that the mutant alleles define nine different loci distributed throughout the Arabidopsis genome. Multiple alleles were isolated for the four complementation groups showing the strongest organ fusion phenotype while the remaining five complementation groups, all of which show only weak floral organ fusion, have a single representative allele. In addition to fusion events between aerial parts of the shoot, some mutants also show abnormal ovule morphology with adjacent ovules joined together at maturity. Many of the fusion mutants isolated have detectable differences in the rate at which chlorophyll can be extracted; however, in one case no difference could be detected between mutant and wild-type plants. In three mutant lines pollen remained unresponsive to contact with the mutant epidermis, demonstrating that organ fusion and pollen growth responses can be genetically separated from one another.