Chinese Bulletin of Botany ›› 2022, Vol. 57 ›› Issue (1): 69-79.DOI: 10.11983/CBB21085

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The Role of Alternative Splicing in Floral Transition

Fangfang Cai1, Changsheng Shao2, Yuqiang Sun1,*()   

  1. 1Plant Genomics and Molecular Improvement of Colored Fiber Laboratory, Zhejiang Sci-Tech University, Hangzhou 310018, China
    2Key Laboratory of Horticultural Plant Biology, Ministry of Education, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan 430070, China
  • Received:2021-05-24 Accepted:2021-10-12 Online:2022-01-01 Published:2022-01-17
  • Contact: Yuqiang Sun

Abstract: Precise regulation of floral transition, which ensures plants bloom in the suitable environment, is essential for the successful reproduction of plants. The flowering time genes are regulated by a variety of molecular mechanisms, including transcriptional, post-transcriptional and post-translational regulations. Alternative splicing is a universal molecular process at the post-transcriptional level that can generate multiple transcripts from a single gene, thereby enriching the diversity of the transcriptome and proteome. The accumulating evidence indicates that alternative splicing plays an important role in the floral transition. According to developmental and environmental cues, alternative splicing can regulate the levels of functional transcripts and/or proteins of flowering time genes by affecting the stability of mRNA and/or the function of protein isoforms. Therefore, revealing the roles of alternative splicing will further improve our understanding of the functions of flowering time genes and the whole regulatory network of floral transition. In this review, we introduce the research progress of alternative splicing in floral transition, and summarize from the various regulatory pathways, thereby providing a reference for further research on the regulatory mechanisms of alternative splicing and floral transition in plants.

Key words: alternative splicing, floral transition, endogenous signals, environmental signals