STENOFOLIA acts as a repressor in regulating leaf blade outgrowth.

We recently reported that the Medicago WOX gene, STENOFOLIA (STF), acts as a transcriptional repressor in regulating leaf blade outgrowth. By using the Nicotiana sylvestris bladeless lam1 mutant as a genetic tool, we showed that the WUS-box, which is conserved among WUS clade WOX genes, is partly responsible for the repressive activity of STF. All members of the modern/WUS clade genes (WUS, WOX1-WOX7) in Arabidopsis that contain intact WUS-box can substitute for STF/LAM1 function while the intermediate and ancient clade members including WOX9,WOX11 and WOX13 cannot, due to lack of the intact WUS-box. Taken together, our results reveal a conserved repression mechanism playing a central role in cell proliferation conferred to the evolutionarily dynamic WOX gene family with acquisition of a repressor domain.