An Omics approach on Marchantia polymorpha single FERONIA and MARIS homologs confirms links between cell wall integrity and abscisic acid

Plant cells are surrounded by an extracellular cell wall that shields them from their abiotic and biotic environment. To coordinate their growth with their cell wall status, plant cells have developed cell wall integrity (CWI) mechanisms, at the center of which lies the transmembrane Malectin-like receptor kinase FERONIA (FER). FER controls a myriad of plant developmental processes including sexual reproduction, cell growth and morphogenesis, often intersecting with phytohormones-dependent pathways such as abscisic acid (ABA) signaling or plant immunity. Interestingly, FER together with its downstream receptor-like cytoplasmic kinase MARIS (MRI) was shown to similarly control root hair and rhizoid integrity in the vascular angiosperm Arabidopsis and the early diverging bryophyte Marchantia polymorpha, respectively. Here, we performed comparative transcriptomics and proteomics on the M. polymorpha mutant plants, Mpfer-1 and Mpmri-1, and their corresponding wild-type accessions Tak-1 and Tak-2. Large and significant overlaps were observed between differentially expressed genes and differentially abundant proteins in both mutants. Our multi-omics approach revealed that MpFER and MpMRI largely cooperate to negatively regulate transcriptional and translational networks, particularly those related to plant defense and ABA responses. Moreover, our phenotypic analyses showed that Mpfer-1 plants are hypersensitive to ABA-dependent growth inhibition, indicating that FERs function of negatively regulating ABA-related growth responses is conserved between bryophytes and vascular plants.