PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Hajk-Georg Drost
AU  - Julia Bellstäedt
AU  - Diarmuid S. Ó’Maoiléidigh
AU  - Anderson T. Silva
AU  - Alexander Gabel
AU  - Claus Weinholdt
AU  - Patrick T. Ryan
AU  - Bas J.W. Dekkers
AU  - Leónie Bentsink
AU  - Henk Hilhorst
AU  - Wilco Ligterink
AU  - Frank Wellmer
AU  - Ivo Grosse
AU  - Marcel Quint
TI  - Post-embryonic hourglass patterns mark ontogenetic transitions in plant development
AID  - 10.1101/035527
DP  - 2015 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 035527
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2015/12/28/035527.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2015/12/28/035527.full
AB  - The historic developmental hourglass concept depicts the convergence of animal embryos to a common form during the phylotypic period. Recently, it has been shown that a transcriptomic hourglass is associated with this morphological pattern, consistent with the idea of underlying selective constraints due to intense molecular interactions during body plan establishment. Although plants do not exhibit a morphological hourglass during embryogenesis, a transcriptomic hourglass has nevertheless been identified in the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana. Here, we investigated whether plant hourglass patterns are also found post-embryonically. We found that the two main phase changes during the life cycle of Arabidopsis, from embryonic to vegetative and from vegetative to reproductive development, are associated with transcriptomic hourglass patterns. In contrast, flower development, a process dominated by organ formation, is not. This suggests that plant hourglass patterns are decoupled from organogenesis and body plan establishment. Instead, they may reflect general transitions through organizational checkpoints.