How Flowering Time of Plants Can Be Controlled
ScienceDaily (Dec. 8, 2010) — Researchers at Umeå Plant Science Center in Sweden discovered, in collaboration with the Syngenta company, a previously unknown gene in sugar beets that blocks flowering. Only with the cold of winter is the gene shut off, allowing the sugar beet to blossom in its second year. The discovery of this new gene function makes it possible to control when sugar beets bloom.
Researchers have discovered a previously unknown gene in sugar beets that blocks flowering. Only with the cold of winter is the gene shut off, allowing the sugar beet to blossom in its second year. The discovery of this new gene function makes it possible to control when sugar beets bloom. (Credit: iStockphoto/Dusko Matic)
The new findings were recently published in the journal Science.
Scientists at Umeå Plant Science Center and the international company Syngenta, in a joint study of genetic regulation in the sugar beet, have discovered an entirely new principle for how flowering can be controlled. The study, which was co-directed by Professorn Ove Nilsson, of the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU), and Syngenta scientist Dr. Thomas Kraft, showed that there is a gene in the sugar beet that was previously unknown.
"When we studied a gene in the sugar beet that usually stimulates blooming in other plants, we made a very surprising discovery: in the sugar beet evolution has developed a 'sister gene' that has taken on the exact opposite function, namely, to inhibit blossoming. For biennial sugar beets this means that they can't flower in their first year. Once the plants have been exposed to the cold of winter at the end of the first year, the 'gene blockade is lifted,' and the sugar beets can bloom in their second year of life," says Ove Nilsson about the function of the newly discovered flowering gene.
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Science 3 December 2010:
Vol. 330 no. 6009 pp. 1397-1400
DOI: 10.1126/science.1197004
REPORT
An Antagonistic Pair of FT Homologs Mediates the Control of Flowering Time in Sugar Beet
Pierre A. Pin1,2, Reyes Benlloch1, Dominique Bonnet3, Elisabeth Wremerth-Weich2, Thomas Kraft2, Jan J. L. Gielen3 and Ove Nilsson1,*
+Author Affiliations
1Umeå Plant Science Centre, Department of Forest Genetics and Plant Physiology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, 901-83 Umeå, Sweden.
2Syngenta Seeds AB, Box 302, 261-23 Landskrona, Sweden.
3Syngenta Seeds SAS, 12 Chemin de l’Hôbit, 31790 Saint-Sauveur, France.
*To whom correspondence should be addressed.
E-mail: Ove.Nilsson@genfys.slu.se
ABSTRACT
Cultivated beets (Beta vulgaris ssp. vulgaris) are unable to form reproductive shoots during the first year of their life cycle. Flowering only occurs if plants get vernalized, that is, pass through the winter, and are subsequently exposed to an increasing day length (photoperiod) in spring. Here, we show that the regulation of flowering time in beets is controlled by the interplay of two paralogs of the FLOWERING LOCUS T (FT) gene in Arabidopsis that have evolved antagonistic functions. BvFT2 is functionally conserved with FT and essential for flowering. In contrast, BvFT1 represses flowering and its down-regulation is crucial for the vernalization response in beets. These data suggest that the beet has evolved a different strategy relative toArabidopsis and cereals to regulate vernalization.
Received for publication 26 August 2010.
Accepted for publication 22 October 2010.
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