transition from vegetative to reproductive growth is an important stage in plant’s life. flowering pathways including photoperiod, vernalization, gibberellins, and autonomous pathway are regulated by different genes. identification of flowering genes is essential for the development of bolting-resistant sugar beet cultivars. in this study, a set of 118 arabidopsis thaliana genes involved in flo...

Having grown up in Pennsylvania, I recall that late winter’s delight in spotting a purple crocus piercing through desiccated gray snow, a harbinger for warmer days ahead. The eruption of the crocus, the bloom of the magnolia, and the flowering of winter wheat are all examples of plant processes that are not simply delayed by winter, but indeed require a sustained period of cold to proceed. Toda...

Flowering, the transition from the vegetative to the generative phase, is a decisive time point in the lifecycle of a plant. Flowering is controlled by a complex network of transcription factors, photoreceptors, enzymes and miRNAs. In recent years, several studies gave rise to the hypothesis that this network is also strongly involved in the regulation of other important lifecycle processes ran...

At a certain stage in their life-cycle plants flower, that is they undergo the transition from vegetative to reproductive development. The correct timing of this transition is crucial for reproductive success, so the plant integrates multiple environmental and endogenous signals to judge when to flower. The Dean laboratory is studying the importance of prolonged cold for flowering, a process kn...

Changes in nuclear organization are considered an important complement to trans-acting factors, histone modifications and non-coding RNAs in robust and stable epigenetic silencing. However, how these multiple layers interconnect mechanistically to reinforce each other's activity is still unclear. A system providing long timescales facilitating analysis of these interconnections is vernalization...

Logic regression has been recognized as a tool that can identify and model non-additive genetic interactions using Boolean logic groups. Logic regression, TASSEL-GLM and SAS-GLM were compared for analytical precision using a previously characterized model system to identify the best genetic model explaining epistatic interaction of vernalization-sensitivity in barley. A genetic model containing...

The timing of flowering, and in particular the degree to which it is responsive to the environment, is a key factor in the adaptation of a given species to various eco-geographic locations and agricultural practices. Flowering time variation has been documented in many crop legumes, and selection for specific variants has permitted significant expansion and improvement in cultivation, from preh...