An Endosperm-Associated Cuticle Is Required for Arabidopsis Seed Viability, Dormancy and Early Control of Germination
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Cuticular layers and seeds are prominent plant adaptations to terrestrial life that appeared early and late during plant evolution, respectively. The cuticle is a waterproof film covering plant aerial organs preventing excessive water loss and protecting against biotic and abiotic stresses. Cutin, consisting of crosslinked fatty acid monomers, is the most abundant and studied cuticular component. Seeds are dry, metabolically inert structures promoting plant dispersal by keeping the plant embryo in an arrested protected state. In Arabidopsis thaliana seeds, the embryo is surrounded by a single cell endosperm layer itself surrounded by a seed coat layer, the testa. Whole genome analyses lead us to identify cutin biosynthesis genes as regulatory targets of the phytohormones gibberellins (GA) and abscisic acid (ABA) signaling pathways that control seed germination. Cutin-containing layers are present in seed coats of numerous species, including Arabidopsis, where they regulate permeability to outer compounds. However, the role of cutin in mature seed physiology and germination remains poorly understood. Here we identify in mature seeds a thick cuticular film covering the entire outer surface of the endosperm. This seed cuticle is defective in cutin-deficient bodyguard1 seeds, which is associated with alterations in endospermic permeability. Furthermore, mutants affected in cutin biosynthesis display low seed dormancy and viability levels, which correlates with higher levels of seed lipid oxidative stress. Upon seed imbibition cutin biosynthesis genes are essential to prevent endosperm cellular expansion and testa rupture in response to low GA synthesis. Taken together, our findings suggest that in the course of land plant evolution cuticular structures were co-opted to achieve key physiological seed properties.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".