Identification, expression analyses of gene homologs in and heterologous validation of in .

UNLABELLED

Bamboos belong to the grass family Poaceae, sub-family Bambusoideae and possess many interesting developmental features including a long vegetative period before flowering. Previously, transcriptome based analyses have identified differentially expressed transcripts in flowering and vegetative tissues to predict gene clusters of functional relevance. In contrast, limited studies were conducted to characterize individual genes to decipher their precise role to induce flowering. This was primarily due to the unavailability of sufficient genomic resources, which has lately been overcome by the release of additional bamboo genomes. In this study, the gene homologs (, , and ) have been identified from five sequenced bamboo species (, , , , ). In addition, homologs from a tropical bamboo () have been PCR amplified, sequenced and included in the analyses to widen spectrum of sampling. Assessment of their phylogenetic and syntenic relationship with related Poaceae neighbours revealed closer relationship between and members than and . Transcriptional expression patterns of , , and in vegetative and floral tissues indicated a possible role of and in flower induction and differentiation, while might be associated with seed development. Total 24 proteins were predicted to interact with the homolog of BtMADS14 protein and 8 of them were members of the MADS-box family. The overexpressing Arabidopsis plants flowered 8-10 days earlier than the wild type plants suggesting its possible involvement in the floral induction of .

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12298-025-01569-3.