Circumnutation and winding in plants are universal growth movements that allow plants to survive despite their sessile nature. However, the detailed molecular mechanisms controlling these phenomena remain unclear. We previously found that a gravitropic mutant of Japanese morning glory (Pharbitis nil or Ipomoea nil), Shidare-asagao (weeping), is defective not only in circumnutation but also in t...

PREMISE OF THE STUDY Many reports have cited Baker's list of weediness traits, or those that exemplify the "ideal" weed, yet few have considered the evolutionary potential of such traits as a group. Thus, it is unknown whether constraints on the evolution of increased weediness, such as a lack of genetic variation or genetic correlations between the traits, are present. Ipomoea purpurea, the co...

Plants do not grow in a strict linear manner, rather they circumnutate. That is, they exhibit an oscillatory or helical growth pattern around an axis. Circumnutation is readily apparent in vines such as morning glory or grape (Fig. 1), but in fact it is nearly ubiquitous in plants. Circumnutation occurs in almost all plant organs throughout all stages of development (Johnsson, 1997; Larson, 200...

The onset and progression of petal senescence, which is a type of programmed cell death (PCD), are highly regulated. Genes showing changes in expression during petal senescence in Japanese morning glory (Ipomoea nil) were isolated and examined to elucidate their function in PCD. We show here that a putative membrane protein, InPSR26, regulates progression of PCD during petal senescence in Japan...

When the upper part of the main shoot of the Japanese morning glory (Pharbitis nil or Ipomoea nil) is bent down, the axillary bud situated on the uppermost node of the bending region is released from apical dominance and elongates. Here, we demonstrate that this release of axillary buds from apical dominance is gravity regulated. We utilized two agravitropic mutants of morning glory defective i...

Mobile element dynamics in seven alleles of the chalcone synthase D locus (CHS-D) of the common morning glory (Ipomoea purpurea) are analyzed in the context of synonymous nucleotide sequence distances for CHS-D exons. By using a nucleotide sequence of CHS-D from the sister species Ipomoea nil (Japanese morning glory [Johzuka-Hisatomi, Y., Hoshino, A., Mori, T., Habu, Y. & Iida, S. (1999) Genes ...