影响莴苣发芽的基因同样影响开花时间

Like most annuals, lettuce ¹ plants live out their lives in quiet, three-act dramas that follow the seasons. Seed dormancy ² gives way to germination ³; the young plant emerges and grows; and finally in the climax ⁴ of flowering, a new generation of seeds is produced. It's remarkably ⁶ predictable, but the genetics that coordinates ⁸ these changes with environmental cues has not been well understood. In a recent study of lettuce and the model plant Arabidopsis, researchers at the UC Davis Seed Biotechnology Center and in China show for the first time that a gene ⁵ known to direct the depth of seed dormancy and the timing ⁹ of germination also influences flowering. The study further suggests that the gene does this by influencing production of certain microRNAs -- tiny snippets of genetic ⁷ material that govern transition from one phase of the plant's life cycle to another., ,The findings, which have important implications for the $1.9 billion annual U.S. lettuce crop, will be reported during the week of March 28 in the Proceedings ¹⁰ of the National Academy of Sciences., ,"It appears that the 'Delay of Germination 1,' or DOG1, gene is an environmental sensor ¹¹, detecting environmental changes and enabling the plant to not only keep the seed dormant ¹² but to also delay flowering," said study co-author Kent Bradford, a plant scientist and director of the Seed Biotechnology Center., ,"This gene could be a particularly valuable tool as climate change shifts our growing seasons and we are forced to develop plants that can adapt to those environmental changes," Bradford said.