Document Type
Article
Publication Date
12-2-2019
Abstract
Telomeres cap the physical ends of eukaryotic chromosomes to ensure complete DNA replication and genome stability. Heritable natural variation in telomere length exists in yeast, mice, plants and humans at birth; however, major effect loci underlying such polymorphism remain elusive. Here, we employ quantitative trait locus (QTL) mapping and transgenic manipulations to identify genes controlling telomere length set point in a multi-parent Arabidopsis thaliana mapping population. We detect several QTL explaining 63.7% of the total telomere length variation in the Arabidopsis MAGIC population. Loss-of-function mutants of the NOP2A candidate gene located inside the largest effect QTL and of two other ribosomal genes RPL5A and RPL5B establish a shorter telomere length set point than wild type. These findings indicate that evolutionarily conserved components of ribosome biogenesis and cell proliferation pathways promote telomere elongation.
Recommended Citation
Abdulkina, L.R., Kobayashi, C., Lovell, J.T. et al. Components of the ribosome biogenesis pathway underlie establishment of telomere length set point in Arabidopsis. Nat Commun 10, 5479 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-13448-z
Comments
The copy of record is available from the publisher at https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-13448-z. Copyright © The Author(s) 2019. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.