title: Genetic architecture of flowering-time variation in Arabidopsis thaliana.
abstract: The onset of flowering is an important adaptive trait in plants. The small ephemeral species Arabidopsis thaliana grows under a wide range of temperature and day-length conditions across much of the Northern hemisphere, and a number of flowering-time loci that vary between different accessions have been identified before. However, only few studies have addressed the species-wide genetic architecture of flowering-time control. We have taken advantage of a set of 18 distinct accessions that present much of the common genetic diversity of A. thaliana and mapped quantitative trait loci (QTL) for flowering time in 17 F₂ populations derived from these parents. We found that the majority of flowering-time QTL cluster in as few as five genomic regions, which include the locations of the entire FLC/MAF clade of transcription factor genes. By comparing effects across shared parents, we conclude that in several cases there might be an allelic series caused by rare alleles. While this finding parallels results obtained for maize, in contrast to maize much of the variation in flowering time in A. thaliana appears to be due to large-effect alleles.
authors.affiliation: Department of Molecular Biology, Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology, Tübingen, Germany.
authors.forename: Patrice A
authors.initials: PA
authors.lastname: Salomé
authors.forename: Kirsten
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Bomblies
authors.forename: Roosa A E
authors.initials: RA
authors.lastname: Laitinen
authors.forename: Levi
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Yant
authors.forename: Richard
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Mott
authors.forename: Detlef
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Weigel
mesh_terms: D000483:Alleles; D017360:Arabidopsis / Q000145:classification / Q000235:genetics* / Q000254:growth & development; D029681:Arabidopsis Proteins / Q000235:genetics; D002874:Chromosome Mapping; D032461:Chromosomes, Plant / Q000235:genetics; D035264:Flowers / Q000235:genetics* / Q000254:growth & development; D014644:Genetic Variation; D005828:Genetics, Population; D005838:Genotype; D010641:Phenotype; D040641:Quantitative Trait Loci / Q000235:genetics*; D013045:Species Specificity; D013997:Time Factors
chemical_list: D029681:Arabidopsis Proteins