Abstract
Because many transcription factors participate in floral organ development, manipulation of such kind of factors can be a powerful tool for modification of floral traits of horticultural plants. Our recent study using transgenic torenias revealed that utilization of Arabidopsis transcription factors is effective for generation of new floral traits. However, it demands time and effort to find out useful genes by generating transgenic plants one by one. To facilitate this process, we transformed torenias by bulk introduction of 50 different chimeric repressors for Arabidopsis transcription factors which participate in regulation of organ development and/or cell differentiation. In the observations of 402 transgenic plants, we found many attractive phenotypes in petal color and/or shape, such as big corollas, enlarged blotches on ventral petals, curled or serrated petal margins and altered color patterns. These phenotypes seemed more valuable and variegated contrary to our expectations from the putative gene function, suggesting that they will provide novel information on the functions of transcription factors which could not be revealed by previous studies in Arabidopsis.
