Description
Flower maturation consists of several events that contribute to reproductive success as flowers open, including petal expansion, stamen filament elongation, pollen release, nectary maturation, stigma growth, and gynoecium maturation to support pollen tube growth. The Arabidopsis transcription factors ARF6 (Auxin Response Factor 6) and ARF8 regulate all of these processes, in part by activating jasmonate biosynthesis. Jasmonates in turn activate genes encoding the transcription factors MYB21 and MYB24, which mediate a subset of the processes controlled by ARF6 and ARF8. This experiment was designed to characterize gene expression in flowers before and after they open, and to determine how arf6 arf8 and myb21 myb24 mutation combinations affect these gene expression patterns.