Plant Biology Seminar

A structural journey among floral regulators

In Arabidopsis like in many other plants, the development of flowers starts on the flanks of the shoot apical meristem. The position of the floral meristem is determined by the phytohormone auxin and the Auxin Response Factor Monopteros/ARF5 transcription factor. Soon afterwards, the LEAFY transcription factor contributes to the emergence and the floral fate of the newly formed flower meristem. I will present how the combination of molecular genetics, structural biology, genomics and modelling allows to better understand how these transcription facts work, how they read instructions in the genome and how they evolved.