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Abstract
Perception of seasonal cues is critical for reproductive success in many plants. Exposure to winter cold is a cue that can confer competence to flower in the spring via a process known as vernalization. In certain grasses, exposure to short days is another winter cue that can lead to a vernalized state. In Brachypodium distachyon, we find that natural variation for the ability of short days to confer competence to flower is due to allelic variation of the FLOWERING LOCUS T (FT1) paralog FT-like9 (FTL9). An active FTL9 allele is required for the acquisition of floral competence, demonstrating a novel role for a member of the FT family of genes. Loss of the short-day vernalization response appears to have arisen once in B. distachyon and spread through diverse lineages indicating that this loss has adaptive value, perhaps by delaying spring flowering until the danger of cold damage to flowers has subsided.
Highlights
Many plants adapted to temperate climates have a biennial or winter-annual life history strategy
Our work reveals a novel role for a FLOWERING LOCUS T (FT)-like gene in the short days (SD)-vernalization pathway and provides a molecular explanation of the distinction between SD vernalization and SD flowering in the pooid grasses
To determine if any accessions have a SD vernalization response, we grew 51 accessions in 8 hr SD followed by long days (LD; eight accessions shifted into 14 hr LD Figure 1—figure supplements 1A 43 accessions into 16-h LD (Supplementary file 1) or 20 hr (Supplementary file 2)); as controls accessions were grown solely in LD or SD
Summary
Many plants adapted to temperate climates have a biennial or winter-annual life history strategy. Short days (SD) provide an alternative winter cue (Purvis and Gregory, 1937; Heide, 1994), and the process by which SD exposure leads to competence to flower has been referred to as SD vernalization (Purvis and Gregory, 1937). The study of SD vernalization in wheat and barley is complicated by the fact that there are genotypes of wheat (e.g. Templar) and barley (e.g. Morex) in which flowering per se occurs in SD; that is certain wheat and barley genotypes are facultative LD plants in that they flower most rapidly in LD and will flower in SD (Kikuchi et al, 2009; Casao et al, 2011a; Evans, 1987) This SD flowering in wheat and barley is distinct from SD vernalization. Our work reveals a novel role for a FT-like gene in the SD-vernalization pathway and provides a molecular explanation of the distinction between SD vernalization and SD flowering in the pooid grasses
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