Molecular Mechanism of Shoot Determinacy and Flowering in Arabidopsis

2000, Simpson et al., 2001). A more comprehensive model proposes fl owering as a part of shoot maturation process (Schultz and Haughn, 1991). Current research aims at clarifying the relationship among the various genes and group them into different, yet overlapping, signaling pathways, and deciphering the molecular mechanism of how the repressors work, e.g., what genes they repress, and how the repression is overcome to allow fl owering. TheEMBRYONIC FLOWER (EMF)genes are required for vegetative development . Molecular characterization of these two genes (Aubert et al., 2001; Yoshida et al., 2001) have provided information on the mechanism of fl oral repression during vegetative development.