Toward functional characterization of Triticum aestivum WFCA-coding sequences
Date
2006-06
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
ORCID
Type
Degree Level
Masters
Abstract
Flowering is a critical step in the plant life cycle. If flowering occurs too early or
too late, seed production suffers. Flowering is regulated through numerous flowering
repressors. As long as these repressors persist, the plant will remain in a vegetative
growth stage. Some plants possess two separate genetic pathways, the autonomous
pathway and the vernalization pathway, that promote the transition to flowering through
stable downregulation of flowering repressors. Once the plant achieves floral
competence, it will flower under inductive environmental conditions.
In Arabidopsis, FCA is a key autonomous pathway gene, acting with FY to
promote the floral transition. Recently, gene sequences resembling FCA were cloned
from hexaploid wheat (Triticum aestivum) and designated as WFCA. WFCA shows
numerous similarities to the FCA peptide, especially regarding three key regions: two
RNA Recognition Motifs and the WW domain. This study seeks to determine if WFCA
genes function similar to FCA by determining if they are able to complement the fca-1
mutant of Arabidopsis thaliana.
T1 progeny from an Arabidopsis fca-1 plant transformed with WFCA were
grown without vernalization and assayed for the final leaf number (FLN). The late
flowering fca-1 control plants bolted with an average FLN of 14.8 while the T1
population had an average FLN of 14.3. Although the numerical difference is slight, the
results are statistically significant, and suggest that WFCA genes may have some degree of flowering promotion activity in Arabidopsis. The lack of strong complementation
may be due to divergence of the WFCA genes from their Arabidopsis counterparts. With
increasing evidence for divergence in flowering promotion between monocot and dicot
species, the development of a robust monocot model system appears to be critical to
provide a good framework to assist studies of the particular nuances of the monocot
flowering process.
Description
Keywords
Wheat, Flowering, FCA, WFCA, Arabidopsis, Floral Transition
Citation
Degree
Master of Science (M.Sc.)
Department
Plant Sciences
Program
Plant Sciences