Abstract
The feathered (fe) mutants in the Japanese morning glory have strongly crumpled or rolled leaves, and flowers with deeply split or tube-like petals folding back at their tips. The fe mutant phenotypes suggest that FE is involved in establishment of organ polarity. For example, number of stomata in abaxial side decreased in fe mutants. FE gene was isolated from a germinal revertant using Simplified Transposon Display (STD) method which allows visualization and isolation of transposon-flanking sequences from high copy-number lines. FE gene has a high homology with KANADI1 (KAN1) gene in Arabidopsis. We suppose that FE expresses on abaxial side of lateral organs, and specify the abaxial identity as KAN. Gentic and molecular analyses showed that the strong fe phenotype is caused by an additional mutation in fe background.
