Floral pathway integrator gene expression mediates gradual transmission of environmental and endogenous cues to flowering time
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Bioinformatics, Computational Biology, Developmental Biology, Plant Science
- Keywords
- Arabidopsis thaliana, flowering time, linear regression, gene expression levels
- Copyright
- © 2017 van Dijk et al.
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ Preprints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
- Cite this article
- (2017) Floral pathway integrator gene expression mediates gradual transmission of environmental and endogenous cues to flowering time. PeerJ Preprints 5:e2724v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.2724v1
Abstract
The appropriate timing of flowering is crucial for the reproductive success of plants. Hence, intricate genetic networks integrate various environmental and endogenous cues such as temperature or hormonal statues. These signals integrate into a network of floral pathway integrator genes. At a quantitative level, it is currently unclear how the impact of genetic variation in signaling pathways on flowering time is mediated by floral pathway integrator genes. Here, using datasets available from literature, we connect Arabidopsis thaliana flowering time in genetic backgrounds varying in upstream signalling components with the expression levels of floral pathway integrator genes in these genetic backgrounds. Our modelling results indicate that flowering time depends in a quite linear way on expression levels of floral pathway integrator genes. This gradual, proportional response of flowering time to upstream changes enables a gradual adaptation to changing environmental factors such as temperature and light.
Author Comment
This is a submission to PeerJ for review.
Supplemental Information
Various literature-derived datasets analysed in the manuscript
Each sheet in the file contains data for one floral pathway integrator gene. These datasets were obtained from literature; see Table I in main text for references. Each dataset presented in the file consists of pairs of gene expression - flowering time, measured in various genetic backgrounds.