FLOWERING LOCUS T has higher protein mobility than TWIN SISTER of FT

Suhyun Jin, Hye Seung Jung, Kyung Sook Chung, Jeong Hwan Lee, Ji Hoon Ahn

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    19 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    In plants, successful reproduction requires the proper timing of fowering under changing environmental conditions. Arabidopsis FLOWERING LOCUS T (FT), which encodes a proposed phloem-mobile forigen, has a close homologue, TWIN SISTER OF FT (TSF). During the vegetative phase, TSF shows high levels of expression in the hypocotyl before FT induction, but the tsf mutation does not have an apparent fowering-time phenotype on its own under long-day conditions. This study compared the protein mobility of FT and TSF. With TSF-overexpressing plants as the rootstock, the fowering time of ft tsf scion plants was only slightly accelerated. Previous work has shown that FT is graft-transmissible; by contrast, this study did not detect movement of TSF from the roots into the shoot of the scion plants. This study used plants overexpressing FT/TSF chimeric proteins to map a region responsible for FT movement. A chimeric TSF with region II of FT (L28 to G98) expressed in the rootstock caused early fowering in ft tsf scion plants; movement of the chimeric protein from the rootstocks into the shoot apical region of the ft tsf scion plants was also detected. Misexpression of TSF in the leaf under the control of the FT promoter or grafting of 35S::TSF cotyledons accelerated fowering of ft-10 plants. FT was more stable than TSF. Taking these results together, we propose that protein mobility of FT is higher than that of TSF, possibly due to a protein domain that confers mobility and/or protein stability.

    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)6109-6117
    Number of pages9
    JournalJournal of experimental botany
    Volume66
    Issue number20
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 2015 Oct

    Bibliographical note

    Publisher Copyright:
    © 2015 The Author. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for Experimental Biology.

    Keywords

    • Arabidopsis thaliana
    • FLOWERING LOCUS T (FT)
    • Flowering time
    • Long-distance signalling
    • Micrografting
    • TWIN SISTER OF FT (TSF)

    ASJC Scopus subject areas

    • Physiology
    • Plant Science

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