Identification of Regulators of Seed Imbibition in Arabidopsis thaliana
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Water is the most important limiting factor required for germination. To regulate water entry and retention by the seed, several evolutionarily adapted strategies have evolved. Amongst seed-producing species, a range of permeabilities exist and these are typically regulated by the properties of the seed covering layers. In all cases once water is permitted entry and encounters the embryo, it responds, and overtime will progress through three phases that are concomitant with germination. Phase I is characterized by rapid water movement and seed swelling as water flows down its gradient, and initiates germination. This phase is passive since all seeds can imbibe water, including dead, alive, dormant, and non-dormant seeds. In Arabidopsis thaliana (Arabidopsis), the seed coat is considered permeable to water and is hypothesized to play a passive role in regulating the initial water entry and progression through phase I imbibition. We provide evidence that phase I seed imbibition is a more complex process than previously predicted. With the development and optimization of an imbibition assay we carried out a reverse genetics screen. This resulted in the identification of more than 25 genotypes with a range of early seed imbibition phenotypes. Furthermore, it was discovered that imbibitional swelling can be altered by dormancy and after-ripening (AR) depending on the genotype. From the list of genotypes that we identified, two basic Leucine Zipper (bZIP) transcription factors, VirE2-INTERACTING PROTEIN 1 (VIP1) and bZIP59 were identified as regulators of imbibition and further characterized. We have determined that bZIP59 is a negative regulator and VIP1 may be a positive regulator of imbibition. VIP1 and bZIP59 are hypothesized to genetically interact to regulate this and other seed-related functions. Additionally, bZIP59 maternally regulates imbibition and early evidence suggests its involvement in β-sitosterol production. Finally, we conclude that imbibition is regulated by both the seed coat and zygotic tissues by unknown factors that are predetermined during seed development and modified by AR in some cases. This work provides compelling evidence that imbibition can be genetically manipulated in permeable seeds, a relatively novel concept that may be utilized to produce drought- and flood-resistant seeds.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
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) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 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 | 0.001 |
| 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".