The Plant Cell Cycle

Abstract

Cell division has a central role in growth and development of plants and in recent years tremendous progress has been made in the elucidation the molecular mechanisms regulation the plant cell cycle. Progression through the cell cycle is controlled by a class of Ser/Thr protein kinases known as cyclin dependent kinases or CDKs. CDK activity requires association with regulatory cyclins and is furthermore governed by numerous control mechanisms including transcription, translation, proteolysis, phosphorylation, dephosphorylation and interaction with inhibitory proteins (KRPs) and docking factors (CKS). I will provide an overview of the current knowledge on cell cycle regulation in plants and I will give several examples on how this knowledge can be used to inhibit or stimulate cell division in transgenic plants. Furthermore, I will give an update on the identification of the majority of genes (approximately 1300) the expression of which is restricted to a specific cell cycle phase. This genome-wide transcript profiling allowed us to identify a panoply of novel, often plant-specific, genes involved in cell cycle progression.