The Flowering Locus C (FLC) , which represses flowering, in Arabidopsis thaliana is negatively regulated by the FVE and FLD genes, which work in a histone deacetlyase complex. High levels of FLC expression were found in fld and fve mutants. This indicates that FVE and FLD work to repress FLC by means of deacetylation.
In cold temperatures, plants, express several genes to prevent injury. A DNA element responsible for inducing an array of cold-induced genes is C/DRE. A mutant in a plant with delayed flowering, acg1, had multiple copies of C/DRE. This mutation was discovered to be in the FVE allele. It was deduced that FVE would also repress the production of cold-induced genes by deacetylation.
It was further found that wild-type plants had flowering delayed when subjected to cold but this was not the case in fve mutants. Based on that, a conclusion was made that FVE regulates both flowering time and cold acclimatisation and is useful in adapting to changing spring weather.
Although fve mutants affect the expression of cold-induced genes, fld mutants do not. The author surmised that FVE worked in complex with FLD to repress FLC but worked independently to repress the expression of cold-induced genes.
References:
Amasino, R. 2004. Take a Cold Flower.
Nat. Genet. 36 (2) 111 -112.
Kim, H-J et. al. 2004. A genetic link between cold responses and flowering time through FVE in Arabidopsis thaliana.
Nat. Genet. 36 (2) 167-171.
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