首页分享 Photoperiod controls plant seed size in a CONSTANS

Photoperiod controls plant seed size in a CONSTANS

来源：花匠小妙招时间：2025-11-10 01:03

Photoperiodic plants perceive changes in day length as seasonal cues to orchestrate their vegetative and reproductive growth. Although it is known that the floral transition of photoperiod-sensitive plants is tightly controlled by day length, how photoperiod affects their post-flowering development remains to be clearly defined, as do the underlying mechanisms. Here we demonstrate that photoperiod plays a prominent role in seed development. We found that long-day (LD) and short-day (SD) plants produce larger seeds under LD and SD conditions, respectively; however, seed size remains unchanged when CONSTANS (CO), the central regulatory gene of the photoperiodic response pathway, is mutated in Arabidopsis and soybean. We further found that CO directly represses the transcription of AP2 (a known regulatory gene of seed development) under LD conditions in Arabidopsis and SD conditions in soybean, thereby controlling seed size in a photoperiod-dependent manner, and that these effects are exerted through regulation of the proliferation of seed coat epidermal cells. Collectively, our findings reveal that a crucial regulatory cascade involving CO-AP2 modulates photoperiod-mediated seed development in plants and provide new insights into how plants with different photoperiod response types perceive seasonal changes that enable them to optimize their reproductive growth.

中文翻译：

光周期以 CONSTANS 依赖性方式控制植物种子大小

光周期植物将日长的变化视为协调其营养和生殖生长的季节性线索。尽管众所周知，光周期敏感植物的花过渡受到日长的严格控制，但光周期如何影响其开花后发育仍有待明确定义，潜在机制也是如此。在这里，我们证明了光周期在种子发育中起着重要作用。我们发现，长日照（LD）和短日照（SD）植株在 LD 和 SD 条件下分别产生较大的种子;然而，当光周期反应途径的中心调控基因 CONSTANS （CO）在拟南芥和大豆中发生突变时，种子大小保持不变。我们进一步发现，在拟南芥的 LD 和大豆的 SD 条件下，CO 直接抑制 AP2 （一种已知的种子发育调节基因）的转录，从而以光周期依赖性方式控制种子大小，并且这些作用是通过调节种皮表皮细胞的增殖来发挥的。总的来说，我们的研究结果表明，涉及 CO-AP2 的关键调节级联调节植物中光周期介导的种子发育，并为具有不同光周期反应类型的植物如何感知季节性变化提供新的见解，从而使它们能够优化生殖生长。