Arabidopsis thaliana life without phytochromes.

ABSTRACT: Plants use light as a source of energy for photosynthesis and as a source of environmental information perceived by photoreceptors. Testing whether plants can complete their cycle if light provides energy but no information about the environment requires a plant devoid of phytochromes because all photosynthetically active wavelengths activate phytochromes. Producing such a quintuple mutant of Arabidopsis thaliana has been challenging, but we were able to obtain it in the flowering locus T (ft) mutant background. The quintuple phytochrome mutant does not germinate in the FT background, but it germinates to some extent in the ft background. If germination problems are bypassed by the addition of gibberellins, the seedlings of the quintuple phytochrome mutant exposed to red light produce chlo

SUBMITTER: Strasser B 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2842051 | biostudies-literature | 2010 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature