title: The Cloning and Functional Characterization of Peach CONSTANS and FLOWERING LOCUS T Homologous Genes PpCO and PpFT.
abstract: Flowering is an essential stage of plant growth and development. The successful transition to flowering not only ensures the completion of plant life cycles, it also serves as the basis for the production of economically important seeds and fruits. CONSTANS (CO) and FLOWERING LOCUS T (FT) are two genes playing critical roles in flowering time control in Arabidopsis. Through homology-based cloning and rapid-amplifications of cDNA ends (RACE), we obtained full-lengths cDNA sequences of Prunus persica CO (PpCO) and Prunus persica FT (PpFT) from peach (Prunus persica (L.) Batsch) and investigated their functions in flowering time regulation. PpCO and PpFT showed high homologies to Arabidopsis CO and FT at DNA, mRNA and protein levels. We showed that PpCO and PpFT were nucleus-localized and both showed transcriptional activation activities in yeast cells, consistent with their potential roles as transcription activators. Moreover, we established that the over-expression of PpCO could restore the late flowering phenotype of the Arabidopsis co-2 mutant, and the late flowering defect of the Arabidopsis ft-1 mutant can be rescued by the over-expression of PpFT, suggesting functional conservations of CO and FT genes in peach and Arabidopsis. Our results suggest that PpCO and PpFT are homologous genes of CO and FT in peach and they may function in regulating plant flowering time.
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Crop Stress Biology in Arid Areas and College of Life Sciences, Northwest A&F University, Yangling, Shaanxi 712100, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Xiang
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Crop Stress Biology in Arid Areas and College of Life Sciences, Northwest A&F University, Yangling, Shaanxi 712100, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Lijun
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: An
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Crop Stress Biology in Arid Areas and College of Life Sciences, Northwest A&F University, Yangling, Shaanxi 712100, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Thi Hung
authors.initials: TH
authors.lastname: Nguyen
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Crop Stress Biology in Arid Areas and College of Life Sciences, Northwest A&F University, Yangling, Shaanxi 712100, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Huike
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Liang
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Crop Stress Biology in Arid Areas and College of Life Sciences, Northwest A&F University, Yangling, Shaanxi 712100, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Rui
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Crop Stress Biology in Arid Areas and College of Life Sciences, Northwest A&F University, Yangling, Shaanxi 712100, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Xiayan
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: Department of Fruit Science, College of Agronomy and Biotechnology, China Agricultural University, Beijing 100193, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Tianhong
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Crop Stress Biology in Arid Areas and College of Life Sciences, Northwest A&F University, Yangling, Shaanxi 712100, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Yafei
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Qi
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Crop Stress Biology in Arid Areas and College of Life Sciences, Northwest A&F University, Yangling, Shaanxi 712100, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Fei
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Yu
mesh_terms: D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D003001:Cloning, Molecular; D035264:Flowers; D017343:Genes, Plant; D005816:Genetic Complementation Test; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D010940:Plant Proteins / Q000737:chemistry / Q000235:genetics; D000068239:Prunus persica / Q000235:genetics*; D012441:Saccharomyces cerevisiae / Q000235:genetics; D017386:Sequence Homology, Amino Acid; D015533:Transcriptional Activation
chemical_list: D010940:Plant Proteins