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Very Proud to finally be able to share this story. - An idea that started by a discussion with @NikoGeldner about whether it was possible to repress lignin synthesis specifically in the endodermis and if that would affect the Casparian strip at all https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1cW233QW8RuAIE
since we assumed that lignin required for CS formation would come from the underlying xylem. - I went into the litterature and dug out some phenylpropanoid-repressive MYB transcription factors, which we expressed in different parts of the endodermis. to end the discussion.
The results really suprized us! The endodermis produces lignin for the CS by itself! We also saw that when we repressed PPs in the late endodermis, suberization behaved strangely! Mind boggled, we teamed up with the experts @ragni_laura @DavidSebastinM7 and @rochus_franke
to further study this. Through a tour-de-force of methods, Estradiol-inductions, double-KOs generations, experiments, head-scratchings and frustrations, we eventually found that suberin appear to require constant PP synthesis in the endodermis. If this is not present, the
suberin-lamellae are degraded and released as free constituents such as fatty acids. Moreover, thanks to @ragni_laura we found out that in the much later periderm, the cells simply collapse if the cannot suberize and lignify properly! - We are really excited and proud of these
findings and think that our tools generated here will be very useful to further study the root barriers with very high precision! Please let us know if you have any questions as we would love to discuss these somewhat controversial findings with the community!
