U Don’t RING me flowers anymore!

Scientists have been studying mutant plants that take an unusually long time to flower. At the SEB conference on Thursday 3 April, researchers from Horticulture Research International will present the results of their investigation into a RING finger protein (RING stands for Really Interesting New Gene) involved in regulating when a plant will flower.

Dr Stephen Jackson and colleagues have been working with mutants that have altered flowering times. One particular mutant that takes a long time to flower was found to be disrupted in a gene for a RING finger protein, suggesting the RING finger protein may be involved in targeting a repressor of flowering for degradation, i.e. switching off the repressor. In the mutant the repressor would not be degraded and thus flowering is delayed.

Although plants follow circadian rhythms which tell them, for example, when to open and shut their flowers, scientists have long suspected the existence of floral repressors that delay flowering. Jackson’s results, to be presented at the Session P9.7, provide evidence to support this theory, and his work can now be extended to isolate putative flowering repressors and characterise them on a molecular level.

A better understanding of the molecular mechanisms controlling flowering will enable growers to be able to predict, and possibly manipulate, the flowering time of their crop to a much greater extent than is currently possible. Genes that have been identified as inducing early flowering, or delaying flowering, can be incorporated into breeding programmes in order to bring harvests forward, possibly enabling two harvests per year, or to delay flowering to enable extension of the growing season of a crop.