Research

© Sylvain Loubery

The Arabidopsis mature seed

© Sylvain Loubery

Endosperm

Embryo

Testa

(maternal dead tissue)

Cuticles are hydrophobic film layers covering plant structures that appeared early in land plant evolution. Cuticles protect the plant’s living tissues from pathogens while limiting transpiration and gas exchanges with the environment.


Seeds are specialized plant structures maintaining the plant embryo in a dry and metabolic inert state. Mature dry seeds must be able to maintain the capacity to produce a viable juvenile seedling upon imbibition with water. This depends notably on the capacity of the seed’s coat to shield living tissues from mechanical and oxidative stress.


We recently identified in Arabidopsis thaliana a thick cuticle tightly embedded in the outer surface of endosperm. Hence this cuticle surrounds all the living tissues within the seeds. We study the genesis of this endosperm-associated cuticle during seed development and its contribution to the remarkable physiological properties of the seed notably its contribution to seed dormancy and seed viability.


Further reading:

A Maternally Deposited Endosperm Cuticle Contributes to the Physiological Defects of transparent testa Seeds.

Loubéry S, De Giorgi J, Utz-Pugin A, Demonsais L, Lopez-Molina L.

Plant Physiol. 2018 Jul;177(3):1218-1233. doi: 10.1104


An Endosperm-Associated Cuticle Is Required for Arabidopsis Seed Viability, Dormancy and Early Control of Germination.

De Giorgi J, Piskurewicz U, Loubery S, Utz-Pugin A, Bailly C, Mène-Saffrané L, Lopez-Molina L.

PLoS Genet. 2015 Dec 17;11(12)

Development and physiological role of cuticular structures in Arabidopsis seeds

A cuticle is present on the outer side of endosperm cells