The answer to your question can be found in a journal article
published in March 2004 (quite recent) in a journal called Bioessays
(Volume 26, Issue 4). The title of the article is "It's time to
flower: the genetic control of flowering time (p 363-373)"
In essence, this journal artice explains (in great detail) the issue
at hand. The website can be found here:
http://80-www3.interscience.wiley.com.content.lib.utexas.edu:2048/cgi-bin/jissue/107640077
The abstract (summary) for the article is as follows:
"In plants, successful sexual reproduction and the ensuing development
of seeds and fruits depend on flowering at the right time. This
involves coordinating flowering with the appropriate season and with
the developmental history of the plant. Genetic and molecular analysis
in the small cruciform weed, Arabidopsis, has revealed distinct but
linked pathways that are responsible for detecting the major seasonal
cues of day length and cold temperature, as well as other local
environmental and internal signals. The balance of signals from these
pathways is integrated by a common set of genes to determine when
flowering occurs. Excitingly, it has been discovered that many of
these same genes regulate flowering in other plants, such as rice.
This review focuses on recent advances in how three of the signalling
pathways (the day-length, vernalisation and autonomous pathways)
function to control flowering."
Unfortunately, access to this journal is restricted to those with
university affiliation or direct subscription. You seem to have an
interest in such topics, however, and may therefore want to invest in
such a subscription.
For me to provide access to the full text article would not be legal.
The article is also very dense, so expounding upon the main points
would require a great deal of time and space (it would be equivalent
to re-writing the article).
Hope this helps :)
--Rcubed |
