Function Studies Of PhNF-YA6 And PhNF-YA4 On Petunia Hybrida

At present,plant molecular biology is commonly used to study plant developmental mechanisms.Petunia is a model plant for the study of flower developmental mechanism,and is widely used in bed plant as well.In recent years,with the more deeply study of the nuclear factor NF-Y family genes,it has been found that nuclear factor NF-Y family genes regulate the plant development.The main purpose of this study was to analyze the function of PhNF-YA6 and PhNF-YA4 genes in petunia and to characterize the expression of petunia “Violet”,which can help us to investigate the effects of PhNF-YA6 and PhNF-YA4 on development of petunia plant.Through silencing of PhNF-YA6 and PhNF-YA4 genes by VIGS technology,the phenotypic characteristics of two silencing petunia plants were different with CK were observed.We made a series of analysis including flowering time,leaf development,flower development,crown size,and leaf senescence.The results are as follows:1.The full-length of petunia PhNF-YA6 and PhNF-YA4 genes were cloned.The amino acid sequences encoded by PhNF-YA6 and PhNF-YA4 genes were analyzed and found to contain the conserved domain of the NF-YA family.2.The pTRV2-GFP-PhNF-YA6 and pTRV2-GFP-PhNF-YA4 were successfully constructed by inserting the PhNF-YA6 and PhNF-YA4 genes into the pTRV2-GFP vector respectively.3.Compared with the wild type plants,the PhNF-YA6-silenced plants showed a obvious phenomena with the smaller crown width and severe browning.4.Compared with the wild type plants,silencing of PhNF-YA6 in the flowering plants showed the phenomenon of leaf senescence,which is different with plants of PhNF-YA4 silenced.