Molecular Genetics of Arabidopsis Thaliana

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This proposal has four separate experimental parts, all related by their goal of attempting to solve different aspects of the problem of how a set of regulatory gene activities turns undifferentiated floral primordia into complex and precise arrays of many differentiated cell types. The experiments proposed are 1) to study in great molecular detail two floral regulatory genes that we have already cloned (APETALA3 and PISTILLATA); 2) to clone and similarly study the cadastral gene SUPERMAN 3) to find new genes with regulatory effects on flower development, and others which interact with the regulatory genes, whose study should reveal as much about floral pattern formation as has been revealed by the study of the homeotic and cadastral genes so far known; and 4) to take the description of wild-type and mutant flower development to a new level of cellular analysis, using laser scanning confocal microsopy, as a way of answering many of the questions left unanswered by the analyses that have been done to date. %%% Plants flower and then produce, thus although Arabidopsis is a weed and of no commercial concern, if an understanding of how flower development is genetically controlled results from this work, the economic implications are significant.