Publications by authors named "N Butel"

The endosperm is a reproductive tissue supporting embryo development. In most flowering plants, the initial divisions of endosperm nuclei are not succeeded by cellularization; this process occurs only after a specific number of mitotic cycles have taken place. The timing of cellularization significantly influences seed viability and size.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Flowering plants, also known as angiosperms, emerged approximately 150 to 200 million years ago. Since then, they have undergone rapid and extensive expansion, now encompassing around 90% of all land plant species. The remarkable diversification of this group has been a subject of in-depth investigations, and several evolutionary innovations have been proposed to account for their success.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Using molecular markers and genetic analysis of mutant phenotypes, a new study reveals that endosperm elimination in plant seeds is under control of the programmed cell death pathway.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Transgenes that are stably expressed in plant genomes over many generations could be assumed to behave epigenetically the same as endogenous genes. Here, we report that whereas the histone H3K9me2 demethylase IBM1, but not the histone H3K4me3 demethylase JMJ14, counteracts DNA methylation of Arabidopsis endogenous genes, JMJ14, but not IBM1, counteracts DNA methylation of expressed transgenes. Additionally, JMJ14-mediated specific attenuation of transgene DNA methylation enhances the production of aberrant RNAs that readily induce systemic post-transcriptional transgene silencing (PTGS).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Hybridization of plants that differ in number of chromosome sets (ploidy) frequently causes endosperm failure and seed arrest, a phenomenon referred to as triploid block. In Arabidopsis, loss of function of NRPD1, encoding the largest subunit of the plant-specific RNA polymerase IV (Pol IV), can suppress the triploid block. Pol IV generates short RNAs required to guide de novo methylation in the RNA-directed DNA methylation (RdDM) pathway.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF