Abstract
Flowering time and maturity are crucial agronomic traits that affect the regional adaptability of soy-bean plants.The development of soybean cultivars with early maturity adapted to longer days and colder climates of high latitudes is very important for ensuring normal ripening before frost begins.FUL belongs to the MADS-box transcription factor family and has several duplicated members in soybeans.In this study,we observed that over-expression of GmFULc in the Dongnong 50 cultivar promoted soybean maturity,while GmFULc knockout mutants exhibited late maturity.Chro-matin immunoprecipitation sequencing(ChIP-seq)and RNA sequencing(RNA-seq)revealed that GmFULc could bind to the CArG,bHLH and ho-meobox motifs.Further investigation revealed that GmFULc could directly bind to the CArG motif in the promoters of the GmZTL3 and GmZTL4 genes.Overexpression of GmZTL4 promoted soybean maturity,whereas the ztl4 mutants exhibited de-layed maturity.Moreover,we found that the cis el-ement box 4 motif of the GmZTL4 promoter,a motif of light response elements,played an important role in controlling the growth period.Deletion of this motif shortened the growth period by increasing the expression levels of GmZTL4.Functional inves-tigations revealed that short-day treatment pro-moted the binding of GmFULc to the promoter of GmZTL4 and inhibited the expression of E1 and E1Lb,ultimately resulting in the promotion of flow-ering and early maturation.Taken together,these findings suggest a novel photoperiod regulatory pathway in which GmFULc directly activates GmZTL4 to promote earlier maturity in soybean.
维普
万方数据