Genetic and molecular analysis of floral induction in Arabidopsis thaliana

摘要: Our interest in floral induction started after the observation of the strong differ-ences in flowering time (FT) and leaf number (LN) shown by early and late ecotypes of Arabidopsis. Even more striking was to observe the effect that a low temperature treatment (vernalization), given on germi-nating seeds, had on the FT of late ecotypes. What is the molecular basis of the differ-ences between early and late ecotypes? What are the molecular mechanisms in-volved in thermoinduction of flowering? How the effect of low temperatures is main-tained through cell division? are some of the questions that initially we tried to an-swer.Because of the difficulty of working with natural populations with very different genetic backgrounds we concentrated our initial work on a single early ecotype, Lands-berg erecta. This ecotype is widely used in several laboratories and a large collection of mutants delayed in FT under long days (LD …