Abstract
Flowering is a critical period during a plant’s life cycle, and thus the identification and characterization of genes involved in flowering date control are of great importance in agronomy, breeding, population genetics and ecology. The model species Medicago truncatula can be used to detect genes explaining the variation for flowering date, which could also explain this variation in legume crops. The objective of this study was to identify the most promising candidate gene explaining a major quantitative trait locus (QTL) for flowering date previously found in three M. truncatula mapping populations. Fine mapping and bioinformatic analysis of bacterial artificial chromosomes (BACs) in the confidence interval of the QTL showed six genes potentially involved in the control of flowering date. Two of these genes, similar to CONSTANS and FT of Arabidopsis thaliana respectively, had genomic mutations when compared to the parents. The transcriptomic study of these genes by semi-quantitative RT-PCR in leaves and flowers sampled at two developmental stages showed that the CONSTANS-like gene was differentially expressed in the two parental lines. A gene belonging to the CONSTANS-like family could explain the major QTL for flowering date segregating in M. truncatula progenies.
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Acknowledgments
The authors are very grateful to F. Durand, C. Gibelin and D. Cadier for their help in genotyping recombinants, gene sequencing and RT-PCRs, to J.F. Bourcier and J. Jousse for phenotyping the plants, to R. Minault and F. Gelin for greenhouse management and to M.R. Perretan and G. Boutet at INRA of Clermont-Ferrand for pseudo-F2 genotyping. J.B. Pierre received a Ph.D. grant from Région Poitou-Charentes.
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Pierre, JB., Bogard, M., Herrmann, D. et al. A CONSTANS-like gene candidate that could explain most of the genetic variation for flowering date in Medicago truncatula . Mol Breeding 28, 25–35 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11032-010-9457-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11032-010-9457-6