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Plant function and evolutionary biology
RESEARCH ARTICLE

VvMADS9, a class B MADS-box gene involved in grapevine flowering, shows different expression patterns in mutants with abnormal petal and stamen structures

Lekha Sreekantan A , Laurent Torregrosa B , Lucie Fernandez B and Mark R. Thomas A C
+ Author Affiliations
- Author Affiliations

A CSIRO Plant Industry, PO Box 350, Glen Osmond, SA 5064, Australia and Cooperative Research Centre for Viticulture, PO Box 145, Glen Osmond, SA 5064, Australia.

B UMR BEPC, Campus Agro-M / INRA, 2 place Viala, 34060, Montpellier cedex 01, France.

C Corresponding author. Email: Mark.R.Thomas@csiro.au

Functional Plant Biology 33(9) 877-886 https://doi.org/10.1071/FP06016
Submitted: 18 January 2006  Accepted: 22 May 2006   Published: 1 September 2006

Abstract

VvMADS9, a MADS-box gene, from grapevine (Vitis vinifera L.) cultivar Cabernet Sauvignon has been isolated and its expression pattern studied in wild type Cabernet Sauvignon, Mourvèdre, and Bouchalès cultivars and mutants of the latter two genotypes showing abnormal petal / stamen structures. Sequence analysis showed that VvMADS9 was highly similar to PISTILLATA (PI), the class B gene that specifies the identity of petals and stamens in Arabidopsis. The temporal expression pattern of VvMADS9 studied through real-time PCR revealed that its expression was specific to flower development. The low levels of expression in the Mourvèdre mutant and the skewed expression pattern in the Bouchalès mutant as compared to their wild type counterparts suggested that VvMADS9 is involved in normal formation of petals and stamens. Through in situ hybridisation, expression of VvMADS9 was detected in stamens and weak expression on the basal regions of the petals. This suggested a possible role for VvMADS9 in specifying stamen and petal organ identity in grapevine similar to Class B genes in other species. All evidence thus pointed to the conclusion that VvMADS9 is an orthologue of PISTILLATA in grapevine.

Keywords: flowering, MADS-box gene, organ identity, PISTILLATA, Vitis vinifera.


Acknowledgments

This work was supported in part by the Commonwealth Cooperative Research Centre Program, and specifically the Cooperative Research Centre for Viticulture (CRCV) and the Grape and Wine Research and Development Cooperation (GWRDC). We thank Don Mackenzie for technical assistance.


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