The Arabidopsis FLOWERING LOCUS C (FLC) gene encodes a MADS box protein that acts as a dose-dependent repressor of flowering. Mutants and ecotypes with elevated expression of FLC are late flowering and vernalization responsive. In this study we describe an early flowering mutant in the C24 ecotype, flc expressor (flx), that has reduced expression of FLC. FLX encodes a protein of unknown functio...

Rice is a facultative short-day plant (SDP), and the regulatory pathways for flowering time are conserved, but functionally modified, in Arabidopsis and rice. Heading date 1 (Hd1), an ortholog of Arabidopsis CONSTANS (CO), is a key regulator that suppresses flowering under long-day conditions (LDs), but promotes flowering under short-day conditions (SDs) by influencing the expression of the flo...

From screening a population of Arabidopsis overexpression lines, two Arabidopsis genes were identified, EFO1 (early flowering by overexpression 1) and EFO2, that confer early flowering when overexpressed. The two genes encode putative WD-domain proteins which share high sequence similarity and constitute a small subfamily. Interestingly, the efo2-1 loss-of-function mutant also flowered earlier ...

FLOWERING LOCUS T (FT) is an important floral integrator whose functions are conserved across plant species. In soybean, two orthologs, FT2a and FT5a, play a major role in initiating flowering. Their expression in response to different photoperiods is controlled by allelic combinations at the maturity loci E1 to E4, generating variation in flowering time among cultivars. We determined the molec...

BACKGROUND The angiosperms, or flowering plants, diversified in the Cretaceous to dominate almost all terrestrial environments. Molecular phylogenetic studies indicate that the orders Amborellales, Nymphaeales and Austrobaileyales, collectively termed the ANA grade, diverged as separate lineages from a remaining angiosperm clade at a very early stage in flowering plant evolution. By comparing t...

Late-flowering ecotypes and mutants of Arabidopsis thaliana and the related crucifer Thlaspi arvense flower early after cold treatment (vernalization). Treatment with the DNA demethylating agent 5-azacytidine induced nonvernalized plants to flower significantly earlier than untreated controls. Cytidine at similar concentrations had no effect on time to flower. In contrast, late-flowering mutant...

To extend our understanding of flowering time control in eudicots, we screened for mutants in the model legume Medicago truncatula (Medicago). We identified an early flowering mutant, spring1, in a T-DNA mutant screen, but spring1 was not tagged and was deemed a somaclonal mutant. We backcrossed the mutant to wild type R108. The F1 plants and the majority of F2 plants were early flowering like ...

The circadian clock regulates many aspects of plant development, including hypocotyl elongation and photoperiodic induction of flowering. ZEITLUPE (ZTL) is a clock-related F-box protein, and altered ZTL expression causes fluence rate-dependent circadian period effects, and altered hypocotyl elongation and flowering time. EARLY FLOWERING 3 (ELF3) is a novel protein of unknown biochemical functio...

Drought escape (DE) is a classical adaptive mechanism which involves rapid plant development to enable the completion of the full life-cycle prior to a coming drought event. This strategy is widely used in populations of native plants, and is also applicable to cereal crops such as wheat. Early flowering time and a shorter vegetative phase can be very important for wheat production in condition...

It is frequently observed that males of dioecious plant species flower earlier in the season than females, although the generality of this pattern has not been quantified. One hypothesis for earlier male flowering is that females require more time for resource acquisition before reproduction; another is that selection for access to unfertilized ovules favors early-flowering males. Here I show t...