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Research progress on the autonomous flowering time pathway in Arabidopsis

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Abstract

The transition from vegetative to reproductive growth phase is a pivotal and complicated process in the life cycle of flowering plants which requires a comprehensive response to multiple environmental aspects and endogenous signals. In Arabidopsis, six regulatory flowering time pathways have been defined by their response to distinct cues, namely photoperiod, vernalization, gibberellin, temperature, autonomous and age pathways, respectively. Among these pathways, the autonomous flowering pathway accelerates flowering independently of day length by inhibiting the central flowering repressor FLC. FCA, FLD, FLK, FPA, FVE, FY and LD have been widely known to play crucial roles in this pathway. Recently, AGL28, CK2, DBP1, DRM1, DRM2, ESD4, HDA5, HDA6, PCFS4, PEP, PP2A-B’γ, PRMT5, PRMT10, PRP39-1, REF6, and SYP22 have also been shown to be involved in the autonomous flowering time pathway. This review mainly focuses on FLC RNA processing, chromatin modification of FLC, post-translational modification of FLC and other molecular mechanisms in the autonomous flowering pathway of Arabidopsis.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 30570151 and 30870212), the Science and Technology Planning Project of Guangzhou Municipality (Nos. 201504281716332) and the Science and Technology Planning Project of the Education Bureau of Guangzhou Municipality (No. 12A001G) to Dr. Chang-En Tian.

Author’s contribution

TCE planned and designed the work and wrote some parts. CJZ drawn the figures and wrote some parts. ZYP wrote some parts. LTX and XCP contributed critically to the improvement and editing the manuscript. All authors contributed to improving the paper and approved the final manuscript.

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  1. School of Life Sciences, Guangzhou University, Guangzhou, 510006, China

    Jing-Zhi Cheng, Yu-Ping Zhou, Tian-Xiao Lv, Chu-Ping Xie & Chang-En Tian

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  1. Jing-Zhi Cheng
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  2. Yu-Ping Zhou
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Cheng, JZ., Zhou, YP., Lv, TX. et al. Research progress on the autonomous flowering time pathway in Arabidopsis . Physiol Mol Biol Plants 23, 477–485 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12298-017-0458-3

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