Probing gene misregulation in bodyguard, lacerata and fiddlehead mutants. Arabidopsis thaliana

Although bodyguard (bdg), lacerata (lcr) and fiddlehead (fdh) mutations affect three unrelated genes, they trigger similar effects, i.e. ectopic organ fusion, increase of cuticle permeability. After performing cutin and wax analyses on these Arabidopsis thaliana mutants, which did not coincide with the putative enzyme functions, we hypothesised that these mutations trigger a complex response which may be visible at the transcriptional level. This analysis revealed that major changes in gene regulation are taking place in bodyguard (bdg), lacerata (lcr) and fiddlehead (fdh) mutants, massively affecting genes associated with lipid, cell wall and intracellular homeostasis but also with pathogen resistance. Overall design: Plants carrying a stable allele of the bodyguard (bdg), lacerata (lcr) and fiddlehead (fdh) mutations, respectively, were grown on soil in parallel to wild type Columbia plants and under controlled growth conditions. Trays were periodically shifted to avoid any position effect and, to increase representativeness of the samples, each sample contains leaf tissue from 15 plants.