Two C3H Type Zinc Finger Protein Genes, CpCZF1 and CpCZF2, from Chimonanthus praecox Affect Stamen Development in Arabidopsis.

Wintersweet () is a popular garden plant because of its flowering time, sweet fragrance, and ornamental value. However, research into the molecular mechanism that regulates flower development in wintersweet is still limited. In this study, we sought to investigate the molecular characteristics, expression patterns, and potential functions of two C3H-type zinc finger (CZF) protein genes, and , which were isolated from the wintersweet flowers based on the flower developmental transcriptome database. and were more highly expressed in flower organs than in vegetative tissues, and during the flower development, their expression profiles were associated with flower primordial differentiation, especially that of petal and stamen primordial differentiation. Overexpression of either or caused alterations on stamens in transgenic . The expression levels of the stamen identity-related genes, such as (), (), (), (), (), (), (), and boundary gene () were significantly up-regulated in overexpression lines. Additionally, the transcripts of , , , , and were markedly increased in overexpressed plant inflorescences. Moreover, CpCZF1 and CpCZF2 could interact with each other by using yeast two-hybrid and bimolecular fluorescence complementation assays. Our results suggest that CpCZF1 and CpCZF2 may be involved in the regulation of stamen development and cause the formation of abnormal flowers in transgenic plants.