Abstract
<Arabidopsis> flowers are composed of four types of floral organs, sepals, petals, stamens, and carpels, which are placed in concentric whorls. Each type of organ has characteristic shape and forms, and the position is defined in each whorl. Little is known about developmental mechanisms controlling the position and shape of floral organs. To identify genes involved in the mechanisms, we are analyzing <fl51> mutant showing defects in sepal and petal shape. In <fl51>, four sepals and petals are narrower and longer than those of wild type, though their identities are normal. Sepal primordia are smaller, and their position shifted toward either the abaxial or adaxial sepal primordium, suggesting that <FL51> is required for the formation of sepal primordia. <FL51> encodes one of protein components of a spliceosome. Expression pattern of <FL51> will be presented and we will discuss about function of <FL51> in sepal and petal development.
