Our lab has just posted a review on wheat spike development, with an emphasis on the regulation of the number of spikelets per spike on bioRxiv.
We also characterized the interactions between the age, photoperiod, vernalization and GA pathways in pasta wheat. Plants with reduced levels of microRNA156 or higher expression of SPL3, SPL4, and SPL13 exhibited accelerated heading time, with stronger effects under suboptimal inductive conditions.
Earlier heading was associated with the upregulation of miR172 and flowering-promoting genes VRN1, FUL2, and FT1 and the downregulation of flowering-repressing genes AP2L1 and VRN2.
Our manuscript on the role of the SPL genes and the endogenous age pathway on wheat heading time is now available in bioRxiv!
www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/...
Additionally, We showed that DELLA proteins can interact with SPL proteins reducing their ability to induce flowering and that interactions between DELLA and both VRN1 and FUL2 can compete with the DELLA-SPL interactions, likely reducing DELLA’s ability to repress SPL3 and SPL4 activity.
Finally, we developed dominant miR156-resistant alleles rSPL3, rSPL4, and rSPL13 that accelerate wheat heading time that can be used to improve wheat adaptation to changing environments.