According to a study published in Plant Physiology, a research team led by Professor Wang Changquan from Nanjing Agricultural University identified a long non-coding RNA lncWD83 from roses, and elucidated its molecular mechanism in promoting rose flowering, revealing a new model of long non-coding RNA regulating plant flowering.

 

The study found that the expression of lncWD83 is associated with the transition of roses from vegetative to reproductive growth. LncWD83 can interact with ubiquitin ligase RcPUB11 to jointly promote the ubiquitination and degradation of the transcriptional repressor RcMYC2L, thus relieving its transcriptional inhibition on the flowering gene RcFT and ultimately promoting rose flowering.

 

This study not only reveals a new mechanism regulating rose flowering, but also provides the first evidence that long non-coding RNAs can participate in the regulation of plant flowering by influencing protein ubiquitination and degradation. This provides new insights into elucidating the regulation of plant reproductive development by long non-coding RNAs, and a theoretical basis for utilizing molecular tools to breed horticultural crops with increased yield.