Genetic Control of Flowering Time in Arabidopsis: an Interactive Database

The transition to flowering is an essential step of the plant life cycle that is tightly controlled by both endogenous and environmental cues. Its regulation is extremely complex and involves hundreds of genes that are part of highly interconnected pathways. Our knowledge of the molecular mechanisms governing the floral induction of Arabidopsis thaliana increases quickly and a significant number of reviews are published every year on this topic. However, most of them focus on a single pathway without highlighting the interconnections existing between them. Furthermore, those reviews become rapidly outdated, since our comprehension of the genetic control of flowering time evolves continuously. Hence, we believe that the current landscape of flowering time research in Arabidopsis misses an exhaustive repository of the genes involved in the control of flowering and their regulatory pathways. Here, we present a new interactive resource built around a curated database of the flowering time genes that brings together multiple pieces of information such as their function, the flowering time phenotype of mutants and overexpressing lines, the related key publications, etc. Our website thus gives access to a curated and exhaustive list of the genes involved in the regulation of flowering time in Arabidopsis as well as the regulatory pathways controlling their expression. Because of its flexibility, the database is highly dynamic and will be periodically updated with the future breakthroughs in this domain.