Plants have two classes of myosins.While recent work has focused on class Ⅺ myosins showing that myosin Ⅺ is responsible for organelle motility and cytoplasmic streaming,much less is known about the role of myosin Ⅷ in plant growth and development.We have used a combination of RNAi and insertional knockouts to probe myosin Ⅷ function in the moss Physcomitrella patens.We isolated △myo8ABCDE plants demonstrating that myosin Ⅷ is not required for plant viability.However,myosin Ⅷ mutants are smaller than wild-type plants in part due to a defect in cell size.Additionally,△myo8ABCDE plants produce more side branches and form gametophores much earlier than wild-type plants.In the absence of nutrient media,△myo8ABCDE plants exhibit significant protonemal patterning defects,including highly curved protonemal filaments,morphologically defective side branches,as well as an increase in the number of branches.Exogenous auxin partially rescues protonemal defects in △myo8ABCDE plants grown in the absence of nutrients.This result,together with defects in protonemal branching,smaller caulonemal cells,and accelerated development in the △myo8ABCDE plants,suggests that myosin Ⅷ is involved in hormone homeostasis in P patens.
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