Abstract
In Arabidopsis, transcription of FT is induced in leaves under inductive long days, while FT protein is transported to the shoot apex and interacts with a bZIP transcription factor, FD, to promote flowering. Previous genomic analyses suggest that some factors interacting with FT other than FD are required for FT function in flowering. In this study, we demonstrated that FT protein interacts with several TCP proteins by using yeast two-hybrid assay and BiFC assay in tobacco leaves. It is also found that BiFC fluorescence is differentially localized in tobacco epidermal cells depending on TCP protein species. By expressing TCP-EGFP fusion proteins in tobacco epidermal cells, we determined that TCP proteins are responsible for the different localizations of BiFC fluorescence. We are examining TCP expression patterns in Arabidopsis in order to investigate which TCP protein(s) can play a role with FT in the shoot apex.
