Flowering Responses to Altered Expression of Phytochrome in Mutants and Transgenic Lines of Arabidopsis thaliana (L.) Heynh

Abstract

The long-day plant Arabidopsis thaliana (L.) Heynh. flowers early in response to brief end-of-day (EOD) exposures to far-red light (FR) following a fluorescent short day of 8 h. FR promotion of flowering was nullified by subsequent brief red light (R) EOD exposure, indicating phytochrome involvement. The EOD response to R or FR is a robust measure of phytochrome action. Along with their wild-type (WT) parents, mutants deficient in either phytochrome A or B responded similarly to the EOD treatments. Thus, neither phytochrome A nor B exclusively regulated flowering, although phytochrome B controlled hypocotyl elongation. Perhaps a third phytochrome species is important for the EOD responses of the mutants and/or their flowering is regulated by the amount of the FR-absorbing form of phytochrome, irrespective of the phytochrome species. Overexpression of phytochrome A or phytochrome B resulted in differing photoperiod and EOD responses among the genotypes. The day-neutral overexpressor of phytochrome A had an EOD response similar to all of the mutants and WTs, whereas R EOD exposure promoted flowering in the overexpressor of phytochrome B and FR EOD exposure inhibited this promotion. The comparisons between relative flowering times and leaf numbers at flowering of the overexpressors and their WTs were not consistent across photoperiods and light treatments, although both phytochromes A and B contributed to regulating flowering of the transgenic plants.