Control of stem cell behaviour by CLE-JINGASA signalling in the shoot apical meristem in Marchantia polymorpha

Land plants undergo indeterminate growth by the activity of the apical meristems in both gametophyte (haploid) and sporophyte (diploid) generations. In the sporophyte of the flowering plant Arabidopsis thaliana, the apical meristems are located at the shoot and root tips, in which a number of regulatory gene homologs are shared for their development, implying deep evolutionary origins. However, little is known about their functional conservation in the gametophytic meristems in distantly related land plants such as bryophytes8-17, even though the genomics studies have revealed the subfamily-level diversity of regulatory genes are mostly conserved throughout land plants. Here we show that a NAM/ATAF/CUC (NAC) domain transcription factor JINGASA (MpJIN) acts in the downstream of CLV3/ESR-related (CLE) peptide signalling and regulates the stem cell behaviour in the gametophytic shoot apical meristem of the liverwort Marchantia polymorpha. The function of JIN/FEZ subfamily genes in the stem cell division and fate determination was likely shared between the shoot apical meristems in gametophyte and sporophyte generations in early land plants.