| Abstract Detail
Emerging Model Species for Developmental, Evolutionary and Functional Analyses Drea, Sinead [1], Hileman, Lena [2], de Martino, Gemma [1], Irish, Vivian F. [3]. Independent derivation of petals is correlated with the redeployment of MADS box gene functions. Petals are thought to have evolved multiple times during the course of angiosperm evolution. Our current understanding of how petals are specified is based on functional analyses in Arabidopsis thaliana and several other core eudicot species. Petals appear to have arisen a single time at the base of the core eudicot clade approximately 130 million years ago, and thus represent a single derivation of the petal developmental process. Because core eudicot petals appear to have evolved independently as compared to those of other petalloid angiosperm taxa, it is unclear the extent to which similar, or distinct, developmental processes operate in the specification of petals in non-core eudicots. Here we investigate the roles of several candidate MADS box genes in petal specification in opium poppy, a non-core eudicot species. Using a virus-induced gene silencing approach to assay gene function, as well as through expression and protein interaction studies, we show that a duplicated derivative of the APETALA3 MADS box gene lineage is necessary for petal identity specification in opium poppy. These functional analyses suggest that while petals may have evolved multiple times, their development in different plant lineages relies on the recruitment of a conserved ancestral developmental mechanism.
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1 - Yale University, Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology, New Haven, CT, 06520, USA
2 - University of Kansas, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, 1200 Sunnyside Ave., Lawrence, KS, 66045, USA
3 - Yale University, Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology, P.O. Box 208104, New Haven, Connecticut, 06520, USA
Keywords:
petals
evolution
MADS box
APETALA3.
Presentation Type: Symposium or Colloquium Presentation
Session: SY05
Location: Stevens 1/Hilton
Date: Monday, July 9th, 2007
Time: 9:45 AM
Number: SY05004
Abstract ID:947 |
