Conclusions and perspectives
Recent progress has demonstrated that evolutionarily
conserved genes and uniquely acquired genes are
involved in the molecular network that regulates flowering in rice. These flowering time genes shape multiple
aspects of rice flowering, including the LD-specific promotion of flowering and natural variations in flowering
time. These new data provoke further interesting issues,
such as the evolutionary processes responsible for the
photoperiodic flowering pathway in rice, the precise
molecular nature of the modification on the conserved
OsGI-Hd1-Hd3a module by day length, and the mechanism of transport and function of Hd3a/RFT1. Unlike
Arabidopsis, the flowering of rice completely depends on
a pair of florigen genes [8
]. Thus, rice provides a unique
system to study florigen function. In addition, the florigen
genes or the regulators of their expression are linked to
crop productivity [35
,53]. Therefore, these flowering
genes should become interesting targets for the future
improvement of rice production.
Disclosure statement
The authors declare no conflicts of interest.
Acknowledgements
We thank members of the Laboratory of Plant Molecular Genetics and the
Laboratory of Biophysics at Nara Institute of Science and Technology for
discussions. This work is supported by the Grants-in-Aid for Scientific
Research on Priority Areas to K.S., and by the Program for Promotion of
Basic Research Activities for Innovative Biosciences (PROBRAIN) to
H.T.
References and recommended reading
Papers of particular interest, published within the annual period of
review, have been highlighted as