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The sweet cherry (Prunus avium) FLOWERING LOCUS T gene is expressed during floral bud determination and can promote flowering in a winter-annual Arabidopsis accession

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FT gene is expressed in leaves and buds and is involved in floral meristem determination and bud development in sweet cherry.

Abstract

In woody fruit perennial trees, floral determination, dormancy and bloom, depends on perception of different environmental and endogenous cues which converge to a systemic signaling gene known as FLOWERING LOCUS T (FT). In long-day flowering plants, FT is expressed in the leaves on long days. The protein travels through the phloem to the shoot apical meristem, where it induces flower determination. In perennial plants, meristem determination and flowering are separated by a dormancy period. Meristem determination takes place in summer, but flowering occurs only after a dormancy period and cold accumulation during winter. The roles of FT are not completely clear in meristem determination, dormancy release, and flowering in perennial plants. We cloned FT from sweet cherry (Prunus avium) and analyzed its expression pattern in leaves and floral buds during spring and summer. Phylogenetic analysis shows high identity of the FT cloned sequence with orthologous genes from other Rosaceae species. Our results show that FT is expressed in both leaves and floral buds and increases when the daylight reached 12 h. The peak in FT expression was coincident with floral meristem identity genes expression and morphological changes typical of floral meristem determination. The Edi-0 Arabidopsis ecotype, which requires vernalization to flower, was transformed with a construct for overexpression of PavFT. These transgenic plants showed an early-flowering phenotype without cold treatment. Our results suggest that FT is involved in floral meristem determination and bud development in sweet cherry. Moreover, we show that FT is expressed in both leaves and floral buds in this species, in contrast to annual plants.

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Acknowledgements

We thank INIA Rayentué for giving us access to their fields for the experiments. We also thank Diego Andrade for helping with chlorophyll measurements, Dr. Henry Temple and Dr Ricardo Nilo for helping with PEBP gene family phylogenic analysis, and Karin Rothkegel for the fruitful discussions. This work was funded by Fondo de Fomento al Desarrollo Científico y Tecnológico FONDEF G09I1008, Corporación de Fomento de la Producción CORFO 13CTI21520-SP05 and 13CTI21520-SP06, Fondo Nacional de Desarrollo Científico y Tecnológico FONDECYT 1120766.

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  1. Centro de Biotecnología Vegetal, Facultad de Ciencias Biológicas, Universidad Andrés Bello, República 217, Santiago, Chile

    Antonia Yarur, Esteban Soto, Gabriel León & Andrea Miyasaka Almeida

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  1. Antonia Yarur
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  2. Esteban Soto
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  3. Gabriel León
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  4. Andrea Miyasaka Almeida
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Correspondence to Andrea Miyasaka Almeida.

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Communicated by Richard G. H. Immink.

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Figure S1

Genotyping of transgenic lines 35S:PavFT-GFP. 16 transgenic lines were generated in Arabidopsis Edi-0 background. Positive lines were confirmed by PCR, amplifying part of the sequence PavFT-GFP (approx. 600 bp). The FDH (AJ010713) gene was used as a control. (TIFF 114762 kb)

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Yarur, A., Soto, E., León, G. et al. The sweet cherry (Prunus avium) FLOWERING LOCUS T gene is expressed during floral bud determination and can promote flowering in a winter-annual Arabidopsis accession. Plant Reprod 29, 311–322 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00497-016-0296-4

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