Fig. 1.

Sequence analysis and transformation experiments of AhgFLC. (A) AhgFLC forms a clade with A. thaliana FLC (FLC) in a neighbor-joining cladogram including FLC homologs of related plants in Brassicaceae. AaFLC, BnFLC, RsFLC, SaFLC, ThFLC, and PEP1 represent Arabidopsis arenosa, Brassica napus, Raphanus sativus, Sinapis alba, Thellungiella halophila, and Arabis alpina homologs of FLC, respectively. The percentage of replicate trees in which the associated taxa clustered together in the bootstrap test (1,000 replicates) are shown above nodes, and branch lengths are proportional to the nucleotide substitution rate. (B) Strong delay in flowering was observed for transgenic plants in which AhgFLC was constitutively expressed in A. thaliana. Phenotypes of 7-wk-old transgenic T1 A. thaliana (Col) expressing FLC and AhgFLC are shown from left to right: 35S::FLC^Col, 35S::AhgFLC^OMO, 35S::AhgFLC^INA, and nontransgenic wild-type plant. AhgFLC^OMO and AhgFLC^INA were obtained from different individuals of A. halleri. (C) Number of rosette leaves of the transgenic plants and wild type at flowering (mean and SD). The numbers above the bars are the total number of plants tested together with the number of nonflowered plants in parentheses. The number of leaves of nonflowered plants was set as 30 in the mean calculation because all nonflowered plants had more than 30 leaves at the end of the growth experiments. Asterisks indicate significant differences in the number of leaves as compared with that of the wild type (Wilcoxon rank-sum test; *P < 0.05; **P < 0.001).