PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Sheldon, Candice C.
AU  - Burn, Joanne E.
AU  - Perez, Pascual P.
AU  - Metzger, Jim
AU  - Edwards, Jennifer A.
AU  - Peacock, W. James
AU  - Dennis, Elizabeth S.
TI  - The <em>FLF</em> MADS Box Gene: A Repressor of Flowering in Arabidopsis Regulated by Vernalization and Methylation
AID  - 10.1105/tpc.11.3.445
DP  - 1999 Mar 01
TA  - The Plant Cell
PG  - 445--458
VI  - 11
IP  - 3
4099  - http://www.plantcell.org/content/11/3/445.short
4100  - http://www.plantcell.org/content/11/3/445.full
SO  - Plant Cell1999 Mar 01; 11
AB  - A MADS box gene, FLF (for FLOWERING LOCUS F), isolated from a late-flowering, T-DNA–tagged Arabidopsis mutant, is a semidominant gene encoding a repressor of flowering. The FLF gene appears to integrate the vernalization-dependent and autonomous flowering pathways because its expression is regulated by genes in both pathways. The level of FLF mRNA is downregulated by vernalization and by a decrease in genomic DNA methylation, which is consistent with our previous suggestion that vernalization acts to induce flowering through changes in gene activity that are mediated through a reduction in DNA methylation. The flf-1 mutant requires a greater than normal amount of an exogenous gibberellin (GA3) to decrease flowering time compared with the wild type or with vernalization-responsive late-flowering mutants, suggesting that the FLF gene product may block the promotion of flowering by GAs. FLF maps to a region on chromosome 5 near the FLOWERING LOCUS C gene, which is a semidominant repressor of flowering in late-flowering ecotypes of Arabidopsis.