Axillary meristem development in Arabidopsis

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One of the aims of developmental biology is to understand the mechanisms underlying the diversification of plant forms. We are using a set of five late-flowering Arabidopsis ecotypes that form naturally selected variant morphology in which vegetative structures continue to initiate even during the plant's reproductive development. This morphological change impacts the life history traits and expends the plant life span from months to years. We previously established key genetic interactions between genes that specify this morphology. In the next step, our aim is to identify downstream targets and key effectors involved in specification of such morphology by taking advantage of GeneChip and tiling arrays. Identification and characterization of specific alleles that have been favored by natural selection would allow us to gain an insight into mechanisms of evolution and to exploit them for environmentally friendly plant biotechnology. Our previous work identified novel floral repressor that acts to delay the onset of reproductive development in plants. Our data suggest that the analysis of remainder of ecotypes may identify additional floral repressors. In addition to contribution to the fundamental understanding of regulation of plant reproductive development, this research project provides tools for the environmentally focused biotechnology of crops using naturally occurring gene regulatory interactions. Our discovered genetic regulatory interactions are crucial for production of maximum biomass, and containment of a transgene, which is required for further development of plants as bioreactors.