New aspects of CLAVATA2, a versatile gene in the regulation of Arabidopsis development

In order to unravel the functions of receptor-like proteins in Arabidopsis (AtRLPs), including the CLAVATA2 (CLV2) receptor, we employed a reverse genetics approach. In previous studies, we assembled a genome-wide collection of AtRLP gene T-DNA insertion mutants and reported on the biological roles of a few AtRLPs closely related to CLV2. In this study, we showed that over-expression of CLV2 in wild-type plants unexpectedly resulted in a multi-carpel phenotype, mimicking the clv2 mutant, which suggests a co-suppression effect on the endogenous CLV2. We also found evidence that the phenotypes of various clv2 alleles are significantly affected by the genetic background of Arabidopsis ecotypes, which, however, did not depend on the ER locus.