Fig 5. Geographical distribution and molecular analysis of FLM ^LINE accessions.

(A) Geographical distribution of the FLM ^LINE accessions (blue pentagons) with the centroid (green star). Please note that one the accession with an ambiguous name was excluded due to the unavailability of geographic information. (B) Neighbour-Joining tree showing the genetic relationship among FLM sequences. The FLM sequences of the 10 FLM ^LINE accessions were analyzed together with Col-0 and further 88 randomly selected sequences. The clade harboring all FLM ^LINE alleles is marked in blue; see S8 Fig for a detailed representation of the entire tree. (C) qRT-PCR analyses of FLM-ß and FLM-δ transcript abundance of ten day-old seedlings of all FLM ^LINE accessions when grown in 21°C long day photoperiod (upper panel). Averages ± SE of three measurements after normalization to Col-0 as a control are shown. The inserted graph shows the summarized log₂-transformed fold changes of FLM ^LINE accessions only (Col-0 excluded). The lower panel displays the ratios of FLM-δ over FLM-ß when normalized to Col-0. (D) Quantitative flowering time analysis of FLM ^LINE accessions grown at 21°C and 15°C under long day photoperiod. Dashed lines mark the respective values for Col-0. Please note that Sp-0 and Ste-0 are vernalization-sensitive accessions. (E) The right graph shows the summarized rosette leaf number of the eight vernalization-insensitive FLM ^LINE accessions. Student’s t-tests were performed in comparison to Col-0 unless indicated otherwise: * = p ≤ 0.05; ** ≤ 0.01; *** = p ≤ 0.001; n.s., not significant. El-0 was identified relatively late in this study and not included in this detailed analysis.