The CLAVATA3/ESR-RELATED (CLE) peptide signals are required for cell-cell communication in several plant growth and developmental processes. However, little is known regarding possible functions of the CLEs in the anther. Here, we show that a T-DNA insertional mutant, and dominant-negative (DN; 显性负性) and overexpression (OX) transgenic plants of the CLE19 gene exhibited significantly reduced anther size and pollen grain number, and abnormal pollen wall formation. Interestingly, the DN-CLE19 pollen grains showed a more extensively covered surface but CLE19-OX pollen exine exhibited clearly missing connections in the network and lacked separation between areas that normally form the lacunae (腔隙). With a combination of cell biological, genetic, and transcriptomic analyses on cle19, DN-CLE19, and CLE19-OX plants, we demonstrated that CLE19-OX plants produced highly vacuolated (有空泡的) and swollen (膨胀的) ams-like tapetal cells (绒毡层细胞), lacked lipidic tapetosomes (含油体) and elaioplasts (油粒体), and had abnormal pollen primexine (初生外壁) without obvious accumulation of sporopollenin (孢粉素) precursors. Moreover, CLE19 is important for the normal expression of > 1,000 genes, including transcription factor gene AMS, 280 AMS-downstream genes, and other genes involved in pollen coat (花粉外被) and pollen exine (花粉外壁) formation, lipid metabolism, pollen germination, and hormone metabolism. In addition, the DN-CLE19(+/+) ams(-/-) plants exhibited the ams anther phenotype and ams(+/-) partially suppressed the DN-CLE19 transgene-induced pollen exine defects. These findings demonstrate that the proper amount of CLE19 signal is essential for the normal expression of AMS and its downstream gene networks in the regulation of anther development and pollen exine formation.

研究方向：主要从事植物雄蕊发育的调控机制和环境响应的研究。采用分子遗传、细胞生物学、基因组学、蛋白质组学、以及生物信息学等手段，研究花药发育的转录调控、表观遗传调控、细胞-细胞间信号传导、以及环境对生殖发育的作用和机理。

First Published data: September 21, 2017.