Enabling photoperiodic control of flowering by timely chromatin silencing of the florigen gene

Abstract

Many plants synchronize their flowering times with changing seasons to maximize reproductive success. A key seasonal cue is the change in day length (photoperiod), that induces the production of a systemic flowering signaling molecule called florigen. A major florigen component is FLOWERING LOCUS T (FT) or its orthologs. In the long-day plant Arabidopsis thaliana, FT expression is well known to be activated by the photoperiod pathway output specifically near dusk in long days; however, underappreciated is the importance of FT silencing at other times of the day, in enabling Arabidopsis to respond only to long days in flowering. We have recently reported that a plant-specific chromatin-silencing complex called EMF1c represses FT expression at times other than around dusk in long days to prevent its temporal ectopic expression from “spoiling” the long-day floral induction in Arabidopsis. Here I further discuss in other day-length sensitive plants the potential involvement of a chromatin mechanism similar to the Arabidopsis EMF1c-mediated silencing, in repressing the expression of FT orthologs to enable diverse photoperiodic control of flowering.