Abstract
We describe the effects of four recessive homeotic mutations that specifically disrupt the development of flowers in Arabidopsis thaliana. Each of the recessive mutations affects the outcome of organ development, but not the location of organ primordia. Homeotic transformations observed are as follows. In agamous-1, stamens to petals; in apetala2-1, sepals to leaves and petals to staminoid petals; in apetala3-1, petals to sepals and stamens to carpels; in pistillata-1, petals to sepals. In addition, two of these mutations (ap2-1 and pi-1) result in loss of organs, and ag-1 causes the cells that would ordinarily form the gynoecium to differentiate as a flower. Two of the mutations are temperature-sensitive. Temperature shift experiments indicate that the wild-type AP2 gene product acts at the time of primordium initiation; the AP3 product is active later. It seems that the wild-type alleles of these four genes allow cells to determine their place in the developing flower and thus to differentiate appropriately. We propose that these genes may be involved in setting up or responding to concentric, overlapping fields within the flower primordium.
Full Text
The Full Text of this article is available as a PDF (5.0 MB).
Selected References
These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.
- Akam M. The molecular basis for metameric pattern in the Drosophila embryo. Development. 1987 Sep;101(1):1–22. [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Bleecker A. B., Estelle M. A., Somerville C., Kende H. Insensitivity to Ethylene Conferred by a Dominant Mutation in Arabidopsis thaliana. Science. 1988 Aug 26;241(4869):1086–1089. doi: 10.1126/science.241.4869.1086. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Hagberg L., Hull R., Hull S., Falkow S., Freter R., Svanborg Edén C. Contribution of adhesion to bacterial persistence in the mouse urinary tract. Infect Immun. 1983 Apr;40(1):265–272. doi: 10.1128/iai.40.1.265-272.1983. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- King P. J. Plant hormone mutants. Trends Genet. 1988 Jun;4(6):157–162. doi: 10.1016/0168-9525(88)90021-2. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Lewis E. B. A gene complex controlling segmentation in Drosophila. Nature. 1978 Dec 7;276(5688):565–570. doi: 10.1038/276565a0. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Scott M. P., Carroll S. B. The segmentation and homeotic gene network in early Drosophila development. Cell. 1987 Dec 4;51(5):689–698. doi: 10.1016/0092-8674(87)90092-4. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]