THE LNK GENE FAMILY: AT THE CROSSROADS OF LIGHT SIGNALING AND THE CIRCADIAN CLOCK

ROMANOWSKI, ANDRÉS; RUGNONE, MATÍAS; MARIA JOSE DE LEONE; JOAQUIN CASAL; MARCELO YANOVSKY; CARLOS ESTEBAN HERNANDO; GARCÍA-HOURQUET, MARIANO; SANTIAGO MORA GARCIA

Paraná

Congreso; LIV Reunión Anual de la Sociedad Argentina de Investigación en Bioquímica y Biología Molecular; 2018

Sociedad Argentina de Investigación en Bioquímica y Biología Molecular

Light signaling pathways interact with the circadian clock to help organisms synchronize physiological and developmental processes to periodicenvironmental cycles. The plant photoreceptors responsible for clock resetting have been characterized, but signaling components that link thephotoreceptors to the clock remain to be identified. In a previous work we reported a novel family of night light?inducible and clock-regulatedgenes (LNKs) that play a key role linking light regulation of gene expression to the control of daily and seasonal rhythms in Arabidopsisthaliana. Particularly, the homologous genes LNK1 and LNK2 were shown to control circadian rhythms, photomorphogenic responses, andphotoperiodic dependent flowering. In the present work, we analyze the role of the whole LNK family, LNK1-LNK4, in these processes. Wefound that LNK3 and LNK4, individually as well as together, didn?t affect circadian rhythms, photomorphogenic responses, and photoperiodicdependent flowering. Nevertheless, depletion of LNK3 and LNK4, or both, in a lnk1;lnk2 mutant background gave rise to perturbations in someof the above mentioned phenotypes. This evidence suggests a complex interaction network among the LNK family members in the linkagebetween light signaling and the circadian clock.