Abstract: The timing of flowering needs to be tightly controlled to maximize reproductive success. Plants perceive seasonal cues (e.g., day length and temperature) to adjust the timing of flowering. These cues regulate the levels of florigen, a mobile flowering signal expressed in the phloem companion cells of leaves, which is then transferred to the shoot apical meristem to initiate the formation of floral meristems. Florigen encoded by the FLOWERING LOCUS T (FT) gene. FT belongs to the Phosphatidylethanolamine-binding protein family, which is a conserved protein family occurring in all taxa from bacteria to animals and plants. Here, we show that FT is capable of interacting with negatively charged phospholipids, specifically phosphatidylglycerol (PG). This presentation will discuss how FT-PG interactions modulate the flowering time of Arabidopsis thaliana, particularly in response to ambient temperatures.

Biography: Hendry (he/him) joined the ARC Training Centre of Future Crops Development in April 2023 as an Innovation Fellow. He was born in Bali, Indonesia, and obtained his B.Sc. from Universitas Gadjah Mada, Indonesia, in 2012. Later, he continued his postgraduate study at Korea University, South Korea, with Professor Ji Hoon Ahn, and earned his Ph.D. in 2021. His work focuses on the molecular mechanism of flowering time regulation. He has received several awards, including the 2018 Young Investigator Award and the 2021 AMOREPACIFIC Great Global Next Generation Research Award, both awarded by the Korean Society for Molecular and Cellular Biology. Currently, he is also a part of the reviewer editor team for Frontiers in Genetics.