A critical role of the soybean evening complex in the control of photoperiod sensitivity and adaptation

作者：Tiantian Bu, Sijia Lu, Kai Wang, Lidong Dong, Shilin Li, Qiguang Xie, Xiaodong Xu, Qun Cheng, Liyu Chen, Chao Fang, Haiyang Li, Baohui Liu, J. Weller, Fanjiang Kong · 发表于：Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 年份：2021 · DOI：10.1073/pnas.2010241118 · 被引用次数：113 · 研究领域：Medicine

Significance In many plant species, the timing of flowering is sensitive to photoperiod. In many crop species, genetic variation in this sensitivity is critical for adaptation to specific regions and management practices. This study identifies a component of the genetic pathway controlling flowering time in soybean, a legume crop of major global importance. Notably, plants lacking this component flower extremely late. Photoperiod sensitivity in plants, including soybean, was first systematically described in a seminal paper 100 y ago, and the results presented here establish an important new molecular step underlying this response. This step is a critical control point that could be genetically adjusted to engineer photoperiod sensitivity for yield improvement across a broad range of locations and agricultural contexts. Photoperiod sensitivity is a key factor in plant adaptation and crop production. In the short-day plant soybean, adaptation to low latitude environments is provided by mutations at the J locus, which confer extended flowering phase and thereby improve yield. The identity of J as an ortholog of Arabidopsis ELF3, a component of the circadian evening complex (EC), implies that orthologs of other EC components may have similar roles. Here we show that the two soybean homeologs of LUX ARRYTHMO interact with J to form a soybean EC. Characterization of mutants reveals that these genes are highly redundant in function but together are critical for flowering under shor...