Genetic Transformation And Molecular Breeding Of Eustoma Russellianum With Foreign FT Gene

The hypothesis of florigen was proposed by Chailakhyan in 1936 to interpret the observation of graft experiments. The physiological characterasation of florigen was soon identified, but his molecular characterization was not known in many years. In 2005, the research of florigen achieved big breakthoughs. The scientists from Germany and Japan identified a flowering time loci gene FD, which can physically interact with FT protein in apical meristem. This result directely associated the FT gene with florigen. In the following two years, several research articles had been published. These works used different methods to confirm that FT protein can move from leaves to apical meristem where it can compose polymers with FD protein to promote flowering.The regulation of flowering time is a hot research area in genetic engineering of flowers. The progresses of florigen research make it very clear that florigen can be used to regulate flowering time. But the signal transduction pathways are complicated and the effects of expressing foreign FT gene can not be predicted. In this research, we use two types of expression vectors which can instantly and constitutely express the destinated genes after heat-shock treatment. We chose lisianthus as host plant to investigate the function of FT gene of Arabidopsis and Populus.We obtained 12 lines of transformants of pK2GW7-AtFT, 9 lines of pK2GW7-PttFT1, 18 lines of pJCGLOX-AtFT and 13 lines of pJCGLOX-PttFT1. We also observed the flowering of callus which confirmed that FT gene of Arabidopsis can promote lisianthus flowering.