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Plant Gene and Trait 2012, Vol.3, No.3, 13
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13
Research Report Open Access
Effect of Ca
2+
Regulators on the CaM Gene Expression in
Guzmania
‘Amaranth’
during Flower Induction by Ethylene
Zhiying Li
1,2,3
, Zilin Yi
4
,
Hanqing Cong
1
,
Li Xu
1,2,3
1. Tropical Crops Genetic Resources Institute, Chinese Academy of Tropical Agricultural Sciences, Danzhou, 571737, P.R. China
2. Key Laboratory of South China Gene Resources and Germplasm Creating, Ministry of Agriculture, Danzhou, 571737, P.R. China
3. Key Laboratory of Tropical Crops Germplasm Genetic Improvement and Creation of Hainan Province, Danzhou, 571737, P.R. China
4. Vegetable Research Institute, Guangxi Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Nanning, 530007, P.R. China
Corresponding author email:
xllzy@263.net;
Authors
Plant Gene and Trait, 2012, Vol.3, No.3 doi: 10.5376/pgt.2012.03.0003
Received: 11, Nov., 2011
Accepted: 09, Dec., 2011
Published: 01, Mar., 2012
This article was first published in Genomics and Applied Biology in Chinese, and here was authorized to translate and publish the paper in English under the terms of Creative
Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Preferred citation for this article:
Li et al., 2012, Effect of Ca
2+
Regulators on the CaM Gene Expression in
Guzmania
‘Amaranth’ during Flower Induction by Ethylene, Plant Gene and Trait,
Vol.3, No.3 13-17 (doi: 10.5376/pgt.2012.03.0003)
Abstract
Since 1930s, the technology of flowering induction by ethylene in bromeliads has begun to be used in production. So far,
it is still effectively used in bromeliads flowering induction. However, There is little clear on the mechanism of ethylene flowering
induction. In order to clarify the role of Ca
2+
-CaM system in flowering induction by ethylene in bromeliads,
Guzmania
‘Amaranth’
plants were employed to be treated with combination of ethylene and Ca
2+
accelerator, or Ca
2+
chelator or Ca
2+
inhibitor respectively.
The expression characteristics of CaM were investigated by the approaches of RT-PCR and Northern blot. The results showed that
the Ca
2+
accelerator can advance the expression peak of CaM at the same time of ethylence treatment, wheresas, Ca
2+
chelator and
Ca
2+
inhibitor could delay the expression peak of CaM. These results were consistent with the corresponding process of the flowering
time, which indicated that the Ca
2+
-CaM system might play an important regulative role in the flowering induction by ethylene in
Guzmania
‘Amaranth’, but not a decisive role.
Keywords
Guzmania
‘Amaranth’; Ethylene; Ca
2+
regulator; CaM; Gene expression
Background
Bromeliaceae are the monocotyledonous herbaceous
plants. Most of them are used as ornamental plants
while a few of them are edible. Bromeliads are famous
tropical flowers. In order to appear on the market on
time, flowering-inducing agents, such as ethylene
and its analogue, were used for the cultivation of
bromeliads. The rosulated leaf of bromeliads can
filtrate the water and nutrition, and the scalelike hairs
on the leaf base epidermis can absorb water, nutrition
and ethylene (Turnbull et al., 1999). Exogenous
ethylene and its analogue might induce bromeliads
flower by increasing endogenous ethylene. Treated
with inhibitor of endogenous ethylene production and
transgenic technology, they can suppress the expression
of ACC synzyme gene, which has been proved by
many investigators (Burg and Burg, 1966; da Gunha,
2005; Kuan et al., 2005; Dukovski et al., 2006; Wang
et al., 2007). However, there is still no specific report
on how the endogenous ethylene launches the flower.
Ca
2+
-CaM has been becoming the hot topic of
cytobiology, development biology and phytophysiology.
Firstly, Ca
2+
is the essential mineral element for plants
growth and development. Sencondly, Ca
2+
is called
the second messenger for its function of coupling the
extracellular information and intracellular physiological
and biochemical responses. CaM, as the receptor of
Ca
2+
, plays an important role in the signal transduction
process and involves in the regulation of many
intracellular physiological and biochemical responses
through its downstream CaM binding proteins (Mao et
al., 2004). Some reports have showed that Ca
2+
participated in the plant flower formation (Havelange,
1989; Gong et al., 1990; Poovaiah and Reddy, 1993).
However, these are seldom studies directly on the
relation between Ca
2+
-CaM system and flower
formation, especially in tropical ornamental plants.