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The Arabidopsis thaliana CONSTANS-LIKE 4 (COL4) - A Modulator of Flowering Time.

  • Steinbach Y Department of Plant and Microbial Biology, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland.
  • 2019-06-14
Published in:
  • Frontiers in plant science. - 2019
Arabidopsis thaliana
CONSTANS (CO)
CONSTANS-LIKE 4 (COL4)
FLOWERING LOCUS T (FT)
SUPPRESSOR OF OVEREXPRESSION OF CONSTANS 1 (SOC1)
flowering time
plants
repressor of flowering
English Appropriate control of flowering time is crucial for crop yield and the reproductive success of plants. Flowering can be induced by a number of molecular pathways that respond to internal and external signals. In Arabidopsis, expression of the key florigenic signal FLOWERING LOCUS T (FT) is positively regulated by CONSTANS (CO) a BBX protein sharing high sequence similarity with 16 CO-like proteins. Within this study, we investigated the role of the Arabidopsis CONSTANS-LIKE 4 (COL4), whose role in flowering control was unknown. We demonstrate that, unlike CO, COL4 is a flowering repressor in long days (LD) and short days (SD) and acts on the expression of FT and FT-like genes as well as on SUPPRESSOR OF OVEREXPRESSION OF CONSTANS 1 (SOC1). Reduction of COL4 expression level leads to an increase of FT and APETALA 1 (AP1) expression and to accelerated flowering, while the increase of COL4 expression causes a flowering delay. Further, the observed co-localization of COL4 protein and CO in nuclear speckles supports the idea that the two act as an antagonistic pair of transcription factors. This interaction may serve the fine-tuning of flowering time control and other light dependent plant developmental processes.
Language
  • English
Open access status
gold
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https://sonar.ch/global/documents/10583
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