Abstract
Flowering is a complex process which is regulated by many external and internal factors. Among them, plants constantly monitor their light environment to determine the flowering time.
We have isolated some genes whose expression levels increased by flowering induction in seedlings of the short-day plant Pharbitis nil var.Violet.
A gene E35 from cotyledons treated with the critical dark period showed 9 membrane-spanning domains in amino acid sequence and similarity with sugar, anion and cation transporters of A. thaliana.
On the other hand, a gene 2-43 from flowering induced apical meristem shares similarity in amino acid sequence with protein phosphatase 2C of A. thaliana and N. tabacum. 2-43 protein has a nuclear localization signal, suggests an involvement in the transcriptional control during early flowering event. Several short cis-elements for responses to light, ABA, GA and ethylene in 5′ upstream of 2-43 gene implicate transcriptional regulation of 2-43 expression by multiple factors.
