The gene of triggers precocious flowering in Arabidopsis seedlings.

The ( gene is the essential integrator of flowering regulatory pathways in angiosperms. The paralogs of the gene may perform antagonistic functions, as exemplified by , that suppresses flowering in , unlike the paralogous activator . The roles of genes in other amaranths were less investigated. Here, we transformed with the () genes of and found that both and accelerated flowering, despite having been the homologs of the floral promoter and suppressor, respectively. The floral promotive effect of was so strong that it caused lethality when overexpressed under the promoter. placed in an inducible cassette accelerated flowering after induction with methoxyphenozide. The spontaneous induction of led to precocious flowering in some primary transformants even without chemical induction. The homolog from had the same impact on viability and flowering as when transferred to . After the gene duplication in Amaranthaceae, the copy maintained the role of floral activator. The second copy underwent subsequent duplication and functional diversification, which enabled it to control the onset of flowering in amaranths to adapt to variable environments.