Recent Posts

Perspective: How flower development genes were identified using forward genetic screens in Arabidopsis

If you weren’t around in the '80s, you missed some great times; the music, the fashion, the flower genetics! This historical perspective article by David Smythe nicely sums up those heady days with an account of how Arabidopsis thaliana blasted into the ranks of a top model organism, in part through…

Review: How floral meristem termination shapes flowers

Flowers come in a breathtaking variety of shapes and sizes. The structures making up a flower, called sepals, petals, stamens, and carpels, all derive from the tightly regulated differentiation of a pool of stem cells in the so-called floral meristem. Floral meristem termination (FMT) is a crucial stage…

CYCLOIDEA3 is targeted by disparate transcription factors in patterning flowers in Gerbera

Yunqing Yu Donald Danforth Plant Science Center Kellogg Lab SAINT LOUIS, MO 63132 United States of America yyu@danforthcenter.org Flowering plants have evolved enormous diversity and complexity of inflorescence architecture. One great model for studying complex inflorescence development and…

silky3 Is a Novel Transcriptional Regulator that Influences Multiple Flower Development Pathways in Maize

Luo et al. demonstrate that ectopic expression of silky3, a novel transcriptional regulator, causes pleiotropic developmental defects in maize inflorescences.. Plant Cell https://doi.org/10.1105/tpc.20.00043 By Haishan Luo, China Agricultural University, Beijing 100193, China Background: Inflorescence…

Fine Tuning Floral Morphology: MADS-Box Protein Complex Formation in Maize

Plant floral organ development is orchestrated by master regulatory genes that control the differentiation of meristem tissue. According to the ABC(DE) model of flower development (Bowman et al., 1989; nicely summarized by Irish, 2017), different floral organs form in concentric whorls (verticils) in…