image: Confocal image of the young grass epidermis expressing a yellow fluorescent protein-tagged reporter gene of the master transcription factor MUTE, which is required for subsidiary cell formation in grasses. Cell files that are producing stomata show very strong signal in the guard cell precursors and weak signal in the lateral subsidiary cell precursors before subsidiary cell formation. The MUTE protein seems to move from the central file to both sides to potentially directly induce subsidiary cell precursor fate.. This material relates to a paper that appeared in the March 17, 2017, issue of Science, published by AAAS. The paper, by M.T. Raissig at Stanford University in Stanford, Calif., and colleagues was titled, "Mobile MUTE specifies subsidiary cells to build physiologically improved grass stomata." view more
Credit: Michael Raissig and Dominique Bergmann