Chamaecrista fasciculata(partridge pea) is a native prairie plant that flowers at different times through out the Eastern and Midwestern United States. Chamaecrista is a fascinating legume with flowering time linked to location (Etterson 2004a,b). The rate of climate change may be too rapid to allow adaptation of flowering time. From an applied ecological perspective, Chamaecrista has potential as a component of mixed prairies as feedstock for biofuel (Fargione et al. 2008). From an evolutionary perspective, Chamaecristais rapidly becoming a model for non-papilionoid legumes that can be used to address questions about the evolution of flowering and nodules in legumes, as well as the timing of whole scale genome duplications within the legumes. Work on the genetics of Chamaecrista is in the early stages. The first Chamaecrista genomics workshop was held in Mexico in December 2008. Our genetics class will be working with this plant over the course of the term and contributing our findings to efforts of the Chamaecrista research community.

Curious about flowering in the different ecotypes? Click here (Microsoft Word 42kB Jan28 09) for some data on Minnesota, Kansas, and Oklahoma ecotypes grown in controlled environments.

Reflect back on your own data from week one and record a hypothesis and prediction about the regulation of flowering in Chamaecrista.

Links that will help you relate gene to the biology of organisms:

Plant Ontology is run out of Oregon State University. We have an invitation to help develop a Chamaecrista ontology. If you're interested in thinking about an ontology, you might want to incorporate what you learned in the first two weeks of lab.

Gene Ontology (G0) is focused on what happens at the cell level and below, while Plant Ontology focuses on the level of the cell and above.

References:

Caicedo, A.L., J.R. Stinchcombe, K.M. Olsen, J. Schmitt, and M. D. Purugganan. 2004. Epistatic interaction between the Arabidopsis FRI and FLC flowering time genes generates a latitudinal cline in a life history trait. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science 101:15670-15675.

Cannon, S.B., L. Sterck, S. Rombauts, S. Sato, F. Cheung, J.P. Gouzy, X. Wang, J. Mudge, J. Vasdewani, T. Scheix, M. Spannagl, C. Nicholson, S.J. Humphray, H. Schoof, Mayer, K.F.X., J. Rogers, F. Quetier, G.E. Oldroyd, F. Debelle, D.R. Cook, E.F. Retzel, B.A. Roe, C.D. Town, S. Tabata, Y. Van de Peer, and N.D. Young (2006) Legume genome evolution viewed through the Medicago truncatula and Lotus japonicus genomes. PNAS. 103: 14959-14964.

Ehrenreich, I.M., Y. Hanzawa, L. Chou, J.L. Roe, P.X. Kover, and M.D. Purugganan (2009) Candidate gene association mapping of Arabidopsis flowering time. Genetics 183: 325-335

Etterson, J.R. and R.G. Shaw (2001) Constraint to adaptive evolution in response to global warming. Science 294: 151-154.

Etterson, J.R. (2004a) Evolutionary potential of Chamaecrista fasciculata in relation to climate change: I. Clinal patterns of selection along an environmental gradient in the Great Plains. Evolution 58:1446-1458.

Etterson, J.R. (2004b) Evolutionary potential of Chamaecrista fasciculata in relation to climate change: II. Genetic architecture of three populations reciprocally planted along an environmental gradient in the Great Plains. Evolution 58:1459-1471.

Fargione, J., J. Hill, D. Tilman, S. Polasky, P. Hawthorne (2008) Land clearing and the biofuel carbon debt. Science 319: 1235-1238.

Haerizadeh, F., C.E. Wong, P.L. Bhalla, P.M. Gresshoff, and M.P. Singh (2009) Genomic expression profiling of mature soybean (Glycine max) pollen. BMC Plant Biology 9: 25

Jack (2004) Molecular and genetic mechanisms of floral control. Plant Cell 16: S1-S17.

Lempe, J., S. Balasubramanian, S. Sureshkumar, A. Singh, M. Schmid, and D. Weigel. 2005. Diversity of flowering responses in wild Arabidopsis thaliana strains. Public Library of Science Genetics, 1 (1): 109-118 http://www.plosgenetics.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pgen.0010006

Liew, L.C., V. Hecht, R.E. Laurie, C.L. Knowles, J.K. Vander Schoor, R.C. Macknight and J.L. Weller (2009) Die Neutralis and Late Bloomer 1 contribute to regulation of the pea circadian clock. Plant Cell 21: 3198-3211

Miller-Rushing, A.J. and D.W. Inouye (2009) Variation in the impact of climate change on flowering phenology and abundance: An examination of two pairs of closely related wildflower species (2009) American Journal of Botany 96: 1821-1829 Schlueter, J.A., P. Dixon, C. Granger, D. Grant, L. Clark, J.J. Doyle, and R.C. Schoemaker (2004) Mining EST databases to resolve evolutionary events in major crop species. Genome 47: 868-876.

Seo, E., H. Lee, J. Jeon, H. Park, J. Kim, Y. Noh, and I. Lee (2009) Crosstalk between cold response and flowering in Arabidopsis is mediated through the flowering-time gene SOC1 and its upstream negative regulator FLC. Plant Cell 21: 3185-3195

Singer, S.R., S.L. Maki, A.D. Farmer, D. Ilut, G.D. May, S.B. Cannon, and J.J. Doyle (2009) Venturing beyond beans and peas – What can we learn from Chamaecrista? Plant Physiol. 151:1041-1047

Sungawa, S., E.C. Wilson, M. Thaler, M.L. Smith, C. Caruso, J.R. Pringle, V.M. Weis, M. Medina and J.A. Schwarz (2009) Generation and analysis of transcriptomic resources for a model system on the rise: the sea anemone Aiptasia pallida and its dinoflagellate endosymbiont. BMC Genomics 10: 258

Tilman, D., J. Hill, and C. Lehman (2006) Carbon-negative biofuels from low-input high-diversity grassland biomass. Science 314: 1598-1600.

Tucker, S.C. (1996) Trends in evolution of floral ontogeny in Cassia Sensu Stricto, Senna, and Chamaecrista
(Leguminosae: Caesalpinioideae: Cassieae: Cassiinae); A study in convergence. Am. J. Bot. 83: 687-711.

Tucker, S.C. (2003) Floral development in legumes. Plant Physiol. 131: 911-926.

Wojciechowski MF, Lavin M, and Sanderson MJ (2004) A phylogeny of legumes (Leguminosae) based on analyses of the plastid matK gene resolves many well-supported subclades within the family. Am J Botany 91:1846-1862.

Wong, P.C., Bhalla, P.L., Ottenhof, H., Singh, M.B. (2008) Transcriptional profiling of the pea shoot apical meristem revealsprocesses underlying its function and maintenance. BMC Plant Biology 8: 73 http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2229/8/73