NO FLOWERING IN SHORT DAY (NFL) is a bHLH transcription factor that promotes flowering specifically under short-day conditions in Arabidopsis

Abstract

Flowering in plants is a dynamic and synchronized process where various cues including age, day length, temperature and endogenous hormones fine-tune the timing of flowering for reproductive success. Arabidopsis thaliana is a facultative long day (LD) plant where LD photoperiod promotes flowering. Arabidopsis still flowers under shortday (SD) conditions, albeit much later than in LD conditions. Although factors regulating the inductive LD pathway have been extensively investigated, the non-inductive SD pathway is much less understood. Here, we identified a key basic helix-loop-helix transcription factor called NFL (NO FLOWERING IN SHORT DAY) that is essential to induce flowering specifically under SD conditions in Arabidopsis. nfl mutants do not flower under SD conditions, but flower similar to the wild type under LD conditions. The no-flowering phenotype in SD is rescued either by exogenous application of gibberellin (GA) or by introducing della quadruple mutants in the nfl background, suggesting that NFL acts upstream of GA to promote flowering. NFL is expressed at the meristematic regions and NFL is localized to the nucleus. Quantitative RT-PCR assays using apical tissues showed that GA biosynthetic genes are downregulated and the GA catabolic and receptor genes are upregulated in the nfl mutant compared with the wild type, consistent with the perturbation of the endogenous GA biosynthetic and catabolic intermediates in the mutant. Taken together, these data suggest that NFL is a key transcription factor necessary for promotion of flowering under non-inductive SD conditions through the GA signaling pathway. © 2016 Published by The Company of Biologists Ltd.