Flower senescence is the terminal phase of developmental processes that leads to the end of its life span. Since a number of developing countries are attracted to this global fresh flower trade for commercial purpose, this phenomenon is major obstacle for all the floricultural industries. Therefore, research related to postharvest changes was carried out to mitigate this problem. The post-harve...

Plant MYB genes can be divided into subgroups on the basis of additional conserved regions of sequence. In some cases, genes within a subgroup share similarities in function, as well as sequence. The functions of three proteins in subgroup 9 have been described, with AmMYBMX regulating the differentiation of conical-papillate petal epidermal cells, PhMYB1 involved in extending the growth of the...

Exposure of carnation (Dianthus caryophyllus L.) flowers to ethylene evokes the developmental program of petal senescence. The temporal relationship of several aspects of this developmental program following treatment with ethylene was investigated. Exposure of mature, presenescent flowers to 7.5 microliters per liter ethylene for at least 6 hours induced petal in-rolling and premature senescen...

Autophagy is one of the main mechanisms of degradation and remobilization of macromolecules, and it appears to play an important role in petal senescence. However, little is known about the regulatory mechanisms of autophagy in petal senescence. Autophagic processes were observed by electron microscopy and monodansylcadaverine staining of senescing petals of petunia (Petunia hybrida); autophagy...

Identifying the genes regulated by the floral homeotic genes APETALA3 (AP3) and PISTILLATA (PI) is crucial for understanding the molecular mechanisms that lead to petal and stamen formation. We have used microarray analysis to conduct a broad survey of genes whose expression is affected by AP3 and PI activity. DNA microarrays consisting of 9216 Arabidopsis ESTs were screened with probes corresp...

The optical appearance of many flowers in nature relies on their inherent pigments ("chemical color") as well as on the surface structure of the epidermis ("structural color"). The structural color is created by a combination of regular and irregular micro- and nanosized features. With a red rose petal as a biological template, we have separated the structural coloration from the chemical color...

Boundary formation is crucial for organ development in multicellular eukaryotes. In higher plants, boundaries that separate the organ primordia from their surroundings have relatively low rates of cell proliferation. This cellular feature is regulated by the actions of certain boundary-specifying genes, whose ectopic expression in organs can cause inhibition of organ growth. Here, we show that ...

The involvement of PISTILLATA (PI) and APETALA (AP) transcription factors in the development of floral organs has previously been elucidated but little is known about their upstream regulation. In this investigation, two novel mutants generated in Papaver somniferum were analyzed--one with partially petaloid sepals and another having sepaloid petals. Progeny from reciprocal crosses of respectiv...

Coptis (Ranunculaceae) contains 15 species and is one of the pharmaceutically most important plant genera in eastern Asia. Understanding of the evolution of morphological characters and phylogenetic relationships within the genus is very limited. Here, we present the first comprehensive phylogenetic analysis of the genus based on two plastid and one nuclear markers. The phylogeny was reconstruc...

Expression of the PSR132 protein from Dianthus caryophyllus (carnation, clover pink) is induced in response to ethylene production associated with petal senescence, and thus the protein is named petal death protein (PDP). Recent work has established that despite the annotation of PDP in sequence databases as carboxyphosphoenolpyruvate mutase, the enzyme is actually a C-C bond cleaving lyase exh...