The isolation and characterization of FPA: A gene involved in the promotion of floral induction in Arabidopsis thaliana

The regulation of floral induction is regulated by both internal factors and environmental conditions. In Arabidopsis, multiple pathways perceive and integrate these signals to ultimately determine the proper time to flower. FPA is a member of a group of floral promoters that act in a developmental or autonomous pathway. Mutants in autonomous-pathway genes are late flowering and the wild-type function of these genes is to negatively regulate the expression of a floral repressor gene, FLC. FPA was isolated by positional cloning, aided by several fpa deletion alleles, and was found to encode an RNA-recognition motifs (RRMs)-containing protein. Increased expression of FPA from a constitutive promoter results in decreased FLC mRNA levels, which rescues the late-flowering phenotypes of autonomous-pathway mutants. We propose that FPA acts together with other autonomous-pathway genes as an RNA-binding protein that negatively regulates FLC mRNA levels.