Bases genéticas y moleculares de la variación natural del desarrollo vegetal

Flowering initiation is a major plant developmental process because it determines the life period for reproduction and survival. Most plant species, wild and crops, show substantial natural variation for the timing of flowering, which reflects their adaptation to different environments. In addition, flowering time is the main trait that has been demonstrated to show a response associated to climate change and its acceleration provides an alternative to escape from unfavourable environmental conditions.

Our laboratory has recently identified FPL4 as a locus involved in the natural variation for flowering time in the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana (Mendez-Vigo et al., 2015). Low level genetic mapping indicates that this is a new locus because it is located in a genomic region where there is no previously known gene involved in the natural variation for this process. The general objective of this project is to characterize and fine map this new flowering time locus, FPL4, and to search for candidate genes for it.