Project description:This study aim to understand how the long and short day flowering pathways are integrated and the mechanism of photoperiod perception in rice. Trascriptome at different time points under LD and SD conditions reveal that photoperiodism in rice is controlled by the evening complex. Mutants in LUX ARRYTHMO (LUX) and EARLY FLOWERING3 (ELF3) orthologs abolish flowering. We show that light causes a rapid and sustained degradation of ELF3-1, and this response is dependent on phyB. ChIP-seq of ELF3 and LUX reveal that EC controls both LD and SD flowering pathways by directly binding and suppressing the expression of key floral repressors, including PRR7 orthologs and Ghd7.
Project description:This study aim to understand how the long and short day flowering pathways are integrated and the mechanism of photoperiod perception in rice. Trascriptome at different time points under LD and SD conditions reveal that photoperiodism in rice is controlled by the evening complex. Mutants in LUX ARRYTHMO (LUX) and EARLY FLOWERING3 (ELF3) orthologs abolish flowering. We show that light causes a rapid and sustained degradation of ELF3-1, and this response is dependent on phyB. ChIP-seq of ELF3 and LUX reveal that EC controls both LD and SD flowering pathways by directly binding and suppressing the expression of key floral repressors, including PRR7 orthologs and Ghd7.
Project description:Plants use photoperiodism to activate flowering in response to a particular daylength. In rice, flowering is accelerated in short-day conditions, and even a brief exposure to light during the dark period (night-break) is sufficient to delay flowering. Although many of the genes involved in controlling flowering in rice have been uncovered, how the long- and short-day flowering pathways are integrated, and the mechanism of photoperiod perception is not understood. While many of the signaling components controlling photoperiod-activated flowering are conserved between Arabidopsis and rice, flowering in these two systems is activated by opposite photoperiods. Here we establish that photoperiodism in rice is controlled by the evening complex (EC). We show that mutants in the EC genes LUX ARRYTHMO (LUX) and EARLY FLOWERING3 (ELF3) paralogs abolish rice flowering. We also show that the EC directly binds and suppresses the expression of flowering repressors, including PRR37 and Ghd7. We further demonstrate that light acts via phyB to cause a rapid and sustained posttranslational modification of ELF3-1. Our results suggest a mechanism by which the EC is able to control both long- and short-day flowering pathways.
Project description:Wheat needs different durations of vernalization, which accelerates flowering by exposure to cold temperature, to ensure reproductive development at the optimum time, as that is critical for adaptability and high yield. TaVRN1 is the central flowering regulator in the vernalization pathway and encodes a MADS-box transcription factor (TF) that usually works by forming hetero- or homo-dimers. We previously identified that TaVRN1 bound to an MADS-box TF TaSOC1 whose orthologues are flowering activators in other plants. The specific function of TaSOC1 and the biological implication of its interaction with TaVRN1 remained unknown. Here, we demonstrated that TaSOC1 was a flowering repressor in the vernalization and photoperiod pathways by overexpression and knockout assays. We confirmed the physical interaction between TaSOC1 and TaVRN1 in wheat protoplasts and in planta, and further validated their genetic interplay. A Flowering Promoting Factor 1-like gene TaFPF1-2B was identified as a common downstream target of TaSOC1 and TaVRN1 through transcriptome and chromatin immunoprecipitation analyses. TaSOC1 competed with TaVRT2, another MADS-box flowering regulator, to bind to TaVRN1; their coding genes synergistically control TaFPF1-2B expression and flowering initiation in response to photoperiod and low temperature. We identified major haplotypes of TaSOC1 and found that TaSOC1-Hap1 conferred earlier flowering than TaSOC1-Hap2 and had been subjected to positive selection in wheat breeding. We also revealed that wheat SOC1 family members were important domestication loci and expanded by tandem and segmental duplication events. These findings offer new insights into the regulatory mechanism underlying flowering control along with useful genetic resources for wheat improvement.
Project description:The Evening Complex (EC) is a core component of the circadian clock, which represses target gene expression at the end of the day and integrates temperature information in order to coordinate environmental and endogenous signals. Despite its importance, the mechanism of EC function remains unknown. Here we show that the EC recruits repressive chromatin domains to regulate the evening transcriptome. The EC component EARLY FLOWERING 3 (ELF3) directly interacts with a protein from the Swi2/Snf2-Related 1 (SWR1) complex to control deposition of H2A.Z-nucleosomes at the EC target genes. The SWR1 components display a circadian oscillation in gene expression with a peak at dusk, suggesting that the circadian clock controls the expression and function of SWR1. In turn, SWR1 is required for the circadian clockwork as defects in SWR1 activity alters morning-expressed genes. The EC-SWR1 complex binds to the promoters of the core clock genes PSEUDORESPONSE REGULATOR 7 (PRR7) and PRR9 and catalyzes H2A.Z deposition coincident with their repression at dusk. This provides a mechanism by which the circadian clock temporally establishes repressive chromatin domains to shape oscillatory gene expression around dusk.
Project description:To determine how clock components are integrated with cellular pathways, affinity purification and mass spectrometry (AP-MS) were used to identify proteins that co-precipitate with the evening complex, which is critical regulator of clock, growth, light and flowering pathways.