ROW1 maintains quiescent centre identity by confining WOX5 expression to specific cells

The quiescent centre (QC) in the Arabidopsis root apical meristem is essential for stem cell organization. Here we show that the loss of REPRESSOR OF WUSCHEL1 (ROW1), a PHD domain-containing protein, leads to QC failure, defects in cell differentiation and ectopic expression of WUSCHEL-RELATED HOMEOBOX 5 ( WOX5 ) in cells that normally express ROW1 . The wox5-1/row1-3 double mutants show similar phenotypes to wox5-1 indicating that WOX5 is epistatic to ROW1. ROW1 specifically binds trimethylated histone H3 lysine 4 (H3K4me3) in the WOX5 promoter region to repress its transcription. QC expression of ROW1 results in a wox5-1 -like phenotype with undetectable WOX5 transcripts. We propose that ROW1 is essential for QC maintenance and for stem cell niche development through the repression of WOX5 in the proximal meristem. The quiescent centre controls stem cell differentiation at the root apical meristem. Here Zhang et al . propose that ROW1 maintains meristem cell identity by repressing expression of the WOX5 transcription factor in the proximal meristem zone, thus confining its activity to the quiescent centre.