Figure 1.

Floral and Molecular Phenotypes of Wild-Type, bl, ben bl, and ben Mutants

(A) to (D) Top view of entire flowers.

(E) to (H) Side view of entire flowers.

(I), (J), and (L) Top view of dissected first whorl organs.

(K) Flower longitudinally sectioned. White arrows mark an ovary carrying ovules in the first whorl carpels.

(M) to (T) Scanning electron microscopy images of epidermal tissues of various floral organs in wild-type and mutants. Whorl numbers (W#) are marked in yellow. (M) and (N) correspond to wild-type stigma and ovary surfaces, respectively. Asterisks of the same color in different panels mark the correspondence of regions analyzed by scanning electron microscopy. The white rectangle in (L) marks the region analyzed by scanning electron microscopy in (T), showing wild-type sepal epidermal cells in the green parts and conical petal cells in the colored parts. Bars = 1 cm, except 0.25 cm in (B), (C), (G), and (K), 50 µm in (M) to (R) and (T), and 500 µm in (S). Single and double mutants shown here are from alleles bl-1 and ben-488.

(U) Relative expression levels of C- and B-class homeotic genes in stage 3 first whorl organs. ben ‘green’: green sepals; ben ‘red’: petaloid sepals. Data represent means ± sd of nine data points obtained from three biological replicates that each were analyzed in triplicate for qRT-PCR analysis. Relative expression (R.E.) values were normalized to the geometrical average of three reference genes. Biological replicates were obtained by pooling stage 3 first whorl organs from each time three different flowers.