A genetic approach to identifying new components in the FT flowering pathway

Plants have developed different strategies to decide when to flower in response to a wide range of environmental and endogenous stimuli. Photoperiod is one of the most important environmental stimuli affecting flowering time in many plant species. In Arabidopsis the flowering process is accelerated under long day conditions (LDs) typical of spring and summer. Under LDs the transcription factor CONSTANS (CO) promotes the expression of FLOWERING LOCUS T (FT) in the leaf vascular tissue. Then, FT protein moves through the phloem to the shoot apex, where it causes changes in gene expression that reprogram the shoot apical meristem to form flowers instead of leaves. Although the importance of FT in the control of flowering time is well established, the mechanisms underlying its transport and function still remain unclear. Here, we describe a new sensitized screening of Arabidopsis mutants which has identified a set of mutations that reduce the capacity of FT to promote early flowering. Next Generation Sequencing is being used to resequence these mutants and identify the affected genes