CONSTANS alters the circadian clock in Arabidopsis thaliana

Abstract

Plants are sessile organisms that have acquired highly plastic developmental strategies to adapt to the environment. Among these processes, the floral transition is essential to ensure reproductive success and is finely regulated by several internal and external genetic networks. The photoperiodic pathway, which controls plant response to day length, is one of the most important pathways controlling flowering. In Arabidopsis photoperiodic flowering, CONSTANS (CO) is the central gene activating the expression of the florigen FLOWERING LOCUS T (FT) in the leaves at the end of a long day. The circadian clock strongly regulates CO expression. However, to date, no evidence has been reported regarding a feedback loop from the photoperiod pathway back to the circadian clock. Using transcriptional networks, we have identified relevant network motifs regulating the interplay between the circadian clock and the photoperiod pathway. Gene expression, chromatin immunoprecipitation experiments, and phenotypic analysis allowed us to elucidate the role of CO over the circadian clock. Plants with altered CO expression showed a different internal clock period, measured by daily leaf rhythmic movements. We showed that CO upregulates the expression of key genes related to the circadian clock, such as CCA1, LHY, PRR5, and GI, at the end of a long day by binding to specific sites on their promoters. Moreover, a high number of PRR5-repressed target genes are upregulated by CO, and this could explain the phase transition promoted by CO. The CO-PRR5 complex interacts with the bZIP transcription factor HY5 and helps to localize the complex in the promoters of clock genes. Taken together, our results indicate that there may be a feedback loop in which CO communicates back to the circadian clock, providing seasonal information to the circadian system.