title: Mass flowering of the tropical tree Shorea beccariana was preceded by expression changes in flowering and drought-responsive genes.
abstract: Community-level mass flowering, known as general flowering, which occurs in South-East Asia at supra-annual irregular intervals, is considered a particularly spectacular phenomenon in tropical ecology. Recent studies have proposed several proximate factors inducing general flowering, such as drought and falls in minimum temperature. However, limited empirical data on the developmental and physiological processes have been available to test the significance of such factors. To overcome this limitation and test the hypotheses that general flowering is triggered by the proposed factors, we conducted an 'ecological transcriptome' study of a mass flowering species, Shorea beccariana, comparing meteorological data with genome-wide expression patterns obtained using next-generation sequencing. Among the 98 flowering-related genes identified, the homologs of a floral pathway integrator, SbFT, and a floral repressor, SbSVP, showed dramatic transcriptional changes before flowering, and their flowering functions were confirmed using transgenic Arabidopsis thaliana. Expression in drought-responsive and sucrose-induced genes also changed before flowering. All these expression changes occurred when the flowering-inducing level of drought was reached, as estimated using data from the preceding 10 years. These genome-wide expression data support the hypothesis that drought is a trigger for general flowering.
authors: Institute of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies, Institute of Plant Biology and Zurich-Basel Plant Science Center, University of Zurich, CH-8057 Zurich, Switzerland.
authors: Masaki J
authors: MJ
authors: Kobayashi
authors: Yayoi
authors: Y
authors: Takeuchi
authors: Tanaka
authors: T
authors: Kenta
authors: Tomonori
authors: T
authors: Kume
authors: Bibian
authors: B
authors: Diway
authors: Kentaro K
authors: KK
authors: Shimizu
mesh_terms: D017360:Arabidopsis / Q000235:genetics / Q000502:physiology; D001210:Asia, Southeastern; D053958:Dipterocarpaceae / Q000235:genetics* / Q000502:physiology; D055864:Droughts; D035264:Flowers / Q000502:physiology*; D020869:Gene Expression Profiling; D018506:Gene Expression Regulation, Plant; D015723:Gene Library; D017343:Genes, Plant; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D030821:Plants, Genetically Modified / Q000235:genetics / Q000502:physiology; D013312:Stress, Physiological / Q000235:genetics; D059467:Transcriptome
keywords: Dipterocarpaceae; Shorea beccariana; flowering time; mass flowering; next-generation sequencing; transcriptomics
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