An altered body plan is conferred on Arabidopsis plants carrying dominant alleles of two genes

Abstract

In this paper, we describe a late-flowering ecotype of Arabidopsis, Sy-0, in which the axillary meristems maintain a prolonged vegetative phase, even though the primary shoot apical meristem has already converted to reproductive development. This novel heterochronic shift in the development of axillary meristems results in the formation of aerial rosettes of leaves at the nodes of the primary shoot axis. We present evidence that the aerial-rosette phenotype arises due to the interaction between dominant alleles of two genes: ART, aerial rosette gene (on chromosome 5) and EAR, enhancer of aerial rosette (on chromosome 4): EAR has been tentatively identified as a new allele of the FRI locus. The possible role of these two genes in the conversion of shoot apical meristems to reproductive development is discussed.