PHYTOCHROME C plays a major role in the acceleration of wheat flowering under long-day photoperiod

作者：Andrew Chen, Chengxia Li, Wei Shau Hu, Mei Yee Lau, Huiqiong Lin, Nathan C. Rockwell, Shelley S. Martin, Judith A. Jernstedt, John Clark Lagarias, Jorge Dubcovsky · 发表于：Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 年份：2014 · DOI：10.1073/pnas.1409795111 · 被引用次数：227 · 研究领域：Light effects on plants、Plant Molecular Biology Research、Photosynthetic Processes and Mechanisms

Phytochromes are dimeric proteins that function as red and far-red light sensors influencing nearly every phase of the plant life cycle. Of the three major phytochrome families found in flowering plants, phytochrome C (PHYC) is the least understood. In Arabidopsis and rice, PHYC is unstable and functionally inactive unless it heterodimerizes with another phytochrome. However, when expressed in an Arabidopsis phy-null mutant, wheat PHYC forms signaling active homodimers that translocate into the nucleus in red light to mediate photomorphogenic responses. Tetraploid wheat plants homozygous for loss-of-function mutations in all PHYC copies (phyC(AB)) flower on average 108 d later than wild-type plants under long days but only 19 d later under short days, indicating a strong interaction between PHYC and photoperiod. This interaction is further supported by the drastic down-regulation in the phyC(AB) mutant of the central photoperiod gene photoperiod 1 (PPD1) and its downstream target flowering locus T1, which are required for the promotion of flowering under long days. These results implicate light-dependent, PHYC-mediated activation of PPD1 expression in the acceleration of wheat flowering under inductive long days. Plants homozygous for the phyC(AB) mutations also show altered profiles of circadian clock and clock-output genes, which may also contribute to the observed differences in heading time. Our results highlight important differences in the photoperiod pathways of the te...