PT - JOURNAL ARTICLE AU - Mathieu Hanemian AU - François Vasseur AU - Elodie Marchadier AU - Elodie Gilbault AU - Justine Bresson AU - Isabelle Gy AU - Cyrille Violle AU - Olivier Loudet TI - Transcriptional natural variation at <em>FLM</em> induces synergistic pleiotropy in <em>Arabidopsis thaliana</em> AID - 10.1101/658013 DP - 2019 Jan 01 TA - bioRxiv PG - 658013 4099 - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2019/06/05/658013.short 4100 - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2019/06/05/658013.full AB - Investigating the evolution of complex phenotypes and the underlying molecular bases of their variation is critical to understand how organisms adapt to the environment. We used leaf growth as a model trait as it is highly integrative of internal and external cues and relies on functions at different levels of the plant organization. Applying classical quantitative genetics on a recombinant inbred line population derived from a Can-0 x Col-0 cross, we identified the MADS-box transcription factor FLOWERING LOCUS M (FLM) as a player of the phenotypic variation for leaf growth and colour. Interestingly, we showed that allelic variation at FLM modulates plant growth strategy along the leaf economics spectrum, a trade-off between resource acquisition and resource conservation observable across thousands of plant species. We demonstrated that the functional differences at FLM relies on a single intronic substitution, disturbing transcript splicing and leading to a low expression of the active FLM transcript. Using phenotypic and climatic data across Arabidopsis natural populations, our work shows how noncoding genetic variation of a single gene may be adaptive through synergistic pleiotropy.