TY - JOUR
T1 - Conservation and divergence of FCA function between Arabidopsis and rice
AU - Lee, Jeong Hwan
AU - Cho, Young Sil
AU - Yoon, Hoon Seok
AU - Mi, Chung Suh
AU - Moon, Jihyun
AU - Lee, Ilha
AU - Weigel, Detlef
AU - Yun, Choong Hyo
AU - Kim, Jeong Kook
N1 - Funding Information:
We are grateful to Dr Takuji Sasaki for the generous gift of the rice EST clones, which originated from the MAFF DNA Bank at the National Institute of Agrobiological Resources (NIAR). We also would like to thank Drs Caroline Dean and Gordon Simpson for the fca-9 mutant, 35S::FCA-γ (in fca-1) seeds, as well as for their advice. We would also like to thank N.Y. Kwon, Drs Jihoon Ahn and Takuji Wada for their comments on this manuscript, and their help with Arabidopsis. We are grateful to all of our other lab members for all their help. We also thank Yun Hee Jang for sequencing the OsFCA clones. This study was supported by a grant from the Plant Signaling Network Research Center, Korea Science and Engineering Foundation, and also by a grant from the Technology Development Program for Agriculture and Forestry, Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, Republic of Korea. Jeong-Hwan Lee and Hoon-Seok Yoon were supported by a BK21 research fellowship from the Korean Ministry of Education and Human Resources Development.
PY - 2005/8
Y1 - 2005/8
N2 - Although several genes have been identified in rice which are functionally equivalent to the flowering time genes in Arabidopsis, primarily genes involved in the photoperiod pathway, little data is available regarding the genes that function in the autonomous pathway in rice. In order to acquire further insight into the control of heading dates in rice, we isolated and conducted an expression analysis on OsFCA, which exhibited 38% sequence homology with Arabidopsis FCA. The N-terminal region of the OsFCA protein appears to be unusually rich in glycine-residues, unlike the N-terminal region found in FCA. However, the genetic structure of OsFCA is, in general, similar to that of FCA. RT-PCR and in silico analyses also showed that alternative splicing and polyadenylation at intron3 were conserved in the genetic expression of OsFCA. We were able to detect α, β, and γ transcripts, but not the δ transcript, of the OsFCA gene. The β and γ transcripts of the OsFCA gene were detected via Northern analysis in the leaves, roots, and flowers of the plant. Flowers in younger stages exhibited higher transcript levels. These data suggest that intron3 may constitute a primary control point in the OsFCA pre-mRNA processing of rice. The overexpression of OsFCA cDNA, driven by the 35S promoter, was shown to partially rescue the late flowering phenotype of the fca mutant, suggesting that the functions of the OsFCA and the FCA are partially overlapped, despite the lack of an apparent FLC homologue in the rice genome. The constitutive expression of OsFCA resulted in no downregulation of FLC, but did result in the weak upregulation of SOC1 in the transgenic Arabidopsis. OsFCA overexpression did not result in a reduction of the γ transcript levels of FCA in the transgenic Arabidopsis either, thereby suggesting that OsFCA had no effects on the autoregulation of Arabidopsis FCA. All of these results imply conservation and divergence in the functions of FCA between rice and Arabidopsis.
AB - Although several genes have been identified in rice which are functionally equivalent to the flowering time genes in Arabidopsis, primarily genes involved in the photoperiod pathway, little data is available regarding the genes that function in the autonomous pathway in rice. In order to acquire further insight into the control of heading dates in rice, we isolated and conducted an expression analysis on OsFCA, which exhibited 38% sequence homology with Arabidopsis FCA. The N-terminal region of the OsFCA protein appears to be unusually rich in glycine-residues, unlike the N-terminal region found in FCA. However, the genetic structure of OsFCA is, in general, similar to that of FCA. RT-PCR and in silico analyses also showed that alternative splicing and polyadenylation at intron3 were conserved in the genetic expression of OsFCA. We were able to detect α, β, and γ transcripts, but not the δ transcript, of the OsFCA gene. The β and γ transcripts of the OsFCA gene were detected via Northern analysis in the leaves, roots, and flowers of the plant. Flowers in younger stages exhibited higher transcript levels. These data suggest that intron3 may constitute a primary control point in the OsFCA pre-mRNA processing of rice. The overexpression of OsFCA cDNA, driven by the 35S promoter, was shown to partially rescue the late flowering phenotype of the fca mutant, suggesting that the functions of the OsFCA and the FCA are partially overlapped, despite the lack of an apparent FLC homologue in the rice genome. The constitutive expression of OsFCA resulted in no downregulation of FLC, but did result in the weak upregulation of SOC1 in the transgenic Arabidopsis. OsFCA overexpression did not result in a reduction of the γ transcript levels of FCA in the transgenic Arabidopsis either, thereby suggesting that OsFCA had no effects on the autoregulation of Arabidopsis FCA. All of these results imply conservation and divergence in the functions of FCA between rice and Arabidopsis.
KW - Arabidopsis
KW - FCA
KW - Flowering-time
KW - Rice
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=26944490380&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1007/s11103-005-8105-8
DO - 10.1007/s11103-005-8105-8
M3 - Article
C2 - 16240176
AN - SCOPUS:26944490380
SN - 0167-4412
VL - 58
SP - 823
EP - 838
JO - Plant Molecular Biology
JF - Plant Molecular Biology
IS - 6
ER -