FLOOZY of petunia is a flavin mono-oxygenase-like protein required for the specification of leaf and flower architecture
Abstract
The mechanisms that determine the relative positions of floral organs, and thereby their numbers, is a poorly understood aspect of flower development. We isolated a petunia mutant, floozy(fzy), in which the formation of floral organ primordia in the outermost three floral whorls and one of the two bracts at the base of the flower is blocked at an early stage. In addition, fzymutants fail to generate secondary veins in leaves and bracts and display a decreased apical dominance in the inflorescence. FZYencodes an enzyme with homology to flavin mono-oxygenases and appears to be the ortholog of YUCCA genes of Arabidopsis. FZY is expressed in young leafs and bracts and in developing flowers. In young floral meristems FZY is expressed in the center of the meristem dome and, later, expression becomes localized on the flanks of the initiating petal and stamen primordia and at several sites in maturing anthers and carpels. These findings indicate that FZY is involved in synthesizing a signaling compound that is required for floral organ initiation and specification of the vascularization pattern in leaves. Although fzy mutants contain normal auxin levels, ectopic expression of FZY results in excessive auxin accumulation, suggesting that the signaling compound is auxin.
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Footnotes
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↵3 Present address: Department of Plant Physiology, University of Amsterdam, Kruislaan 318, 1098 SM Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
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↵4 Corresponding author.
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E-MAIL koes{at}bio.vu.nl; FAX 31-2047155.
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Article and publication are at http://www.genesdev.org/cgi/doi/10.1101/gad.219502.
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- Received October 30, 2001.
- Accepted January 18, 2002.
- Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press