Poster: Reproductive Development

Abs # 491: A molecular genetic study of Arabidopsis flowering time

Presenter:	klejnot, john , jklejnot@hotmail.com
Authors	klejnot, john  (A)
Affiliations:	(A): UCLA dept. of MCDB

Flowering in Arabidopsis thaliana is under the control of several distinct pathways, including the autonomous pathway, photoperiodic pathway, GA pathway, and vernalization pathway. Genes encoding different types of proteins have been identified in the regulation of flowering time. Among them, RNA-binding proteins are particularly interesting, partly because they are relatively less understood. Two such proteins have been found to be involved in the autonomous pathway, FCA and FPA that contain RRM's (RNA-Recognition Motifs) and act by repressing FLC. RRM's are characteristic of RNA-binding and processing proteins that function in splicing and stability of mRNA transcripts. To investigate whether RNA-binding proteins may be involved also in photoperiodic pathway regulating flowering time, we screened ~500 T-DNA insertional mutant lines corresponding to the genes encoding putative RNA-binding proteins. Several mutants have been identified which showed altered flowering time. A study of these mutants and the corresponding genes will be discussed.