Abstract
In plants, the vegetative to reproductive phase transition (termed bolting in Arabidopsis) generally precedes age-dependent leaf senescence (LS). Many studies describe a temporal link between bolting time and LS, as plants that bolt early, senesce early, and plants that bolt late, senesce late. However, the molecular mechanisms underlying this relationship are unknown and are potentially agriculturally important, as they may allow for the development of crops that can overcome early LS caused by stress-related early phase transition. We hypothesized that gene expression changes associated with bolting time were regulating LS. We used a mutant that displays both early bolting and early LS as a model to test this hypothesis. An RNA-seq time series experiment was completed to compare the early bolting mutant to vegetative WT plants of the same age. This allowed us to identify bolting time-associated genes (BAGs) expressed in an older rosette leaf at the time of inflorescence emergence. The BAG list contains many well characterized LS regulators (ORE1, WRKY45, NAP, WRKY28), and GO analysis revealed enrichment for LS and LS-related processes. These bolting associated LS regulators likely contribute to the temporal coupling of bolting time to LS.
Competing Interest Statement
The authors have declared no competing interest.
Footnotes
Funding Statement: This work was supported by the NIH SCORE program 1SC3GM113810 to JAB and the NIH RISE program to WEH 2R25GM071638-09A1
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/geo/query/acc.cgi?acc=GSE134177
Abbreviations
- ABA
- abscisic acid
- BAGs
- Bolting Associated Genes
- CK
- Cytokinin
- DEG
- Differentially Expressed Genes
- DILS
- Dark Induced Leaf Senescence
- GEO
- Gene Expression Omnibus
- GO
- Gene Ontology
- GRN
- Gene Regulatory Network
- JA
- Jasmonic acid
- LS
- Leaf Senescence
- LSD
- Leaf Senescence Database
- PCA
- Principal Component Analysis
- PCR
- Polymerase Chain Reaction
- RT-PCR
- Reverse Transcriptase Polymerase Chain Reaction
- qPCR
- Quantitative Polymerase Chain Reaction
- SA
- Salicylic Acid
- T0
- Bolting Time
- T2
- 2 Days After Bolting
- T4
- 4 Days After Bolting
- T6
- 6 Days After Bolting
- TMs
- atx Triple Mutants
- WT
- Wildtype