Maize anthocyanin regulatory gene pl is a duplicate of c1 that functions in the plant.

Genetic studies in maize have identified several regulatory genes that control the tissue-specific synthesis of purple anthocyanin pigments in the plant. c1 regulates pigmentation in the aleurone layer of the kernel, whereas pigmentation in the vegetative and floral tissues of the plant body depends on pl. c1 encodes a protein with the structural features of eukaryotic transcription factors and functions to control the accumulation of transcripts for the anthocyanin biosynthetic genes. Previous genetic and molecular observations have prompted the hypothesis that c1 and pl are functionally duplicate, in that they control the same set of anthocyanin structural genes but in distinct parts of the plant. Here, we show that this proposed functional similarity is reflected by DNA sequence homology between c1 and pl. Using a c1 DNA fragment as a hybridization probe, genomic and cDNA clones for pl were isolated. Comparison of pl and c1 cDNA sequences revealed that the genes encode proteins with 90% or more amino acid identity in the amino- and carboxyl-terminal domains that are known to be important for the regulatory function of the C1 protein. Consistent with the idea that the pl gene product also acts as a transcriptional activator is our finding that a functional pl allele is required for the transcription of at least three structural genes in the anthocyanin biosynthetic pathway.