Xiaohe Hu , Jiechen Wang , Zhaoxia Tian , Zhong Zhao , Da Luo

Institute of Plant Physiology and Ecology, Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, National Key Laboratory of Plant Molecular Genetics, Shanghai, 200032
Author    Correspondence author
Legume Genomics and Genetics, 2010, Vol. 1, No. 2   doi: 10.5376/lgg.2010.01.0002
Received: 21 Jun., 2010    Accepted: 11 Sep., 2010    Published: 27 Sep., 2010

This article was first published in Molecular Plant Breeding (Regular Print Version), and here was authorized to redistribute 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.

Wang et al., 2010, Mutations Affecting Lateral Petal Development in Lotus japonicus, Molecular Plant Breeding, 8(1): 6-10 (doi: 10.3969/mpb.008.000006)

To investigate the genetic loci to regulate the development of petal shape, screening of the mutation affecting lateral petal development was conducted in a model plant of legume, Lotus japonicus.  Two independent mutants, kew2 and kew3 with the similar phenotype were obtained, whose shape of lateral petal is altered and resembles the one of ventral petal in the wild type.  Genetic analysis showed that kew3 was caused by the same single recessive locus and allelic to the one of kew1, a formal identified mutant in the locus KEW1. KEW1 has been shown to be an ortholog of K in pea, but whose mutation at the molecular level is unsolved yet. Furthermore, genetic analyses of kew2 indicate that there are other genetic factors which could interact with kew and involve in the lateral petal development. Analysis of these mutations and cloning the corresponding loci will shield light on the underlying molecular mechanism in the control of floral asymmetry and facilitate our understanding on the evolution of the zygomorphic development. 

Lotus japonicus; Mutagensis; Keeled-wing locus; Floral symmetry