miR156-regulated SPL transcription factors define an endogenous flowering pathway in Arabidopsis thaliana.

By Jiawei Wang, Benjamin Czech, Detlef Weigel. Cell, 2009

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The FT gene integrates several external and endogenous cues controlling flowering, including information on day length. A complex of the mobile FT protein and the bZIP transcription factor FD in turn has a central role in activating genes that execute the switch from vegetative to reproductive development. Here we reveal that microRNA156-targeted SQUAMOSA PROMOTER BINDING PROTEIN-LIKE (SPL) genes not only act downstream of FT/FD, but also define a separate endogenous flowering pathway. High levels of miR156 in young plants prevent precocious flowering. A subsequent day length-independent decline in miR156 abundance provides a permissive environment for flowering and is paralleled by a rise in SPL levels. At the shoot apex, FT/FD and SPLs converge on an overlapping set of targets, with SPLs directly activating flower-promoting MADS box genes, providing a molecular substrate for both the redundant activities and the feed-forward action of the miR156/SPL and FT/FD modules in flowering control.

Subfields: Molecular Biology, Plant Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/1be5f6c877ec9a024b793e109fe72c3d527fc23c

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Citations in the corpus

Seasonal and developmental timing of flowering. (2010, background): “Some miR156-repressed SPL genes are also positive regulators of other flowering promoters (Figure 2) (Cardon et al., 1999; Wang et al., 2009a; Yamaguchi et al., 2009).”
Regulation of flowering time: all roads lead to Rome (2011, background): “Interestingly, regulation of flowering by miR156 appears to define a novel flowering time pathway that acts independently of the photoperiod, vernalization, and GA pathways [173].”
The control of developmental phase transitions in plants (2011, background): “Notably, when miR156-targeted SPL activity continues to rise, plants will eventually flower without the requirement for photoperiod-dependent FT/FD activity (Wang et al., 2009).”
MicroRNAs as master regulators of the plant NB-LRR defense gene family via the production of phased, trans-acting siRNAs. (2011, background): “Among the more unusual is an AP2like gene with both a miR156 and a conserved miR172 site; miR156 and miR172 are intimately involved in juvenile-to-adult-phase transition in Arabidopsis (Wang et al. 2009; Wu et al. 2009).”
Negative Regulation of Anthocyanin Biosynthesis in Arabidopsis by a miR156-Targeted SPL Transcription Factor[W][OA] (2011, methodology): “Previous studies have shown that SPL9 activates expression of several downstream target genes, including APETALA1, FRUITFULL, MIR172b, and TCL1, by directly binding to their regulatory sequences (Wang et al., 2009; Wu et al., 2009; Yamaguchi et al., 2009; Yu et al., 2010).”
The Complex Regulation of Senescence (2012, background): “Plants undergo phase transitions from juvenile to adult and from vegetative to reproductive growth, and recent findings have started to identify the molecular mechanisms controlling these transitions (Fornara and Coupland, 2009; Wang et al., 2009; Wu et al., 2009; Yamaguchi et al., 2009).”