A Plant within a Plant: Insights on the Development of the Rafflesia Endophyte within its Host
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A Plant within a Plant: Insights on the Development of the Rafflesia Endophyte within its Host Adhityo Wicaksono 1,4
& Sofi
Mursidawati 2,4 & Jeanmaire Molina 3,4
1
Division of Biotechnology, Generasi Biologi Indonesia Foundation, Jl. Swadaya Barat no. 4, Gresik 61171, Indonesia 2 Research Center for Plant Conservation and Botanic Gardens, Indonesian Institute of Science (LIPI), Jl. Ir. H. Juanda no.13, Bogor 16003, Indonesia 3 Department of Biology, Long Island University, 1 University Plaza, Brooklyn, NY 11201, USA 4 Author for Correspondence; e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected] Accepted: 16 November 2020/ # The New York Botanical Garden 2020
Abstract Rafflesia produces the largest single flowers in the world, at the expense of its host vine, Tetrastigma, yet it begins as an inconspicuous endophyte. It is unknown how the Rafflesia seed gets into the host and germinates. Multiple locals claim to have successfully grown the holoparasitic flower from seeds resulting in blooms. Using available morpho-histological studies, combined with descriptions from local Rafflesia seed growers, as well as unpublished details of our own work, we filled in the missing details of Rafflesia’s life cycle from seed germination to endophyte inside the host before it transitions to its flowering stage. Post-germination, the Rafflesia endophyte forms a clonal network of vegetative meristematic cells, separated by the dividing host tissue, each meristematic cell cluster eventually developing into the primordial floral bud or protocorm. We propose future work involving mass spectrometry imaging to characterize the metabolites that allow communication between distant endophytic clusters and floral bud induction without destroying the histology of the sample. Keywords Rafflesiaceae . Holoparasite . Parasitic plant . Plant development
Introduction Rafflesia produces the largest single flowers in the world, growing up to a meter in diameter, at the expense of its host plant, Tetrastigma (Vitaceae). Restricted to the fast disappearing forests of Southeast Asia, Rafflesia is a charismatic icon of biodiversity conservation, but like its parasitic relatives in Rafflesiaceae (Rhizanthes and Sapria), we know little of its life cycle to successfully cultivate it for ex situ conservation. The emergence of the flower bud from the seed requires years inside the host plant, reaching up to 6 years in some species based on records for R. arnoldii R.Br., R. tengku-adlinii Mat Salleh, R. pricei Meijer, and R. keithi Meijer (Hidayati et al. 2000; Susatya 2011).
A. Wicaksono et al.
However, it is unknown how the Rafflesia seed germinates. Histological studies have revealed that the Rafflesia endophyte forms uniseriate strands of undifferentiated, meristematic cells inside the host, remaining vegetative for some time, eventually transitioning into a clump of cells called the protocorm, the beginning of the flower bud, from an unknown trigger (Nikolov et al. 2014; Mursidawati et al. 2019). In this re
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