LEAFY (abbreviated LFY) is a
plant gene that causes groups of undifferentiated
cells
Cell most often refers to:
* Cell (biology), the functional basic unit of life
Cell may also refer to:
Locations
* Monastic cell, a small room, hut, or cave in which a religious recluse lives, alternatively the small precursor of a monastery w ...
called
meristems to develop into
flowers instead of leaves with associated
shoots.
''LEAFY'' is involved in floral meristem identity.
''LEAFY'' encodes a plant-specific
transcription factor, is found in all land plants and in charophytes and one of its
exon
An exon is any part of a gene that will form a part of the final mature RNA produced by that gene after introns have been removed by RNA splicing. The term ''exon'' refers to both the DNA sequence within a gene and to the corresponding sequen ...
s have been used extensively in phylogenetic work on
spermatophytes. When the gene is
overexpressed, the plant is less sensitive to environmental signals and flowers earlier.
The LEAFY protein has two conserved domains: the DNA binding domain, a
Helix-Turn-Helix motif buried inside a unique 7-helix fold and a
Sterile Alpha Motif
In molecular biology, the protein domain Sterile alpha motif (or SAM) is a putative protein interaction module present in a wide variety of proteins involved in many biological processes. The SAM domain that spreads over around 70 residues is fo ...
. It binds DNA as a dimer and its binding site has been identified both in vivo and in vitro.
References
{{reflist
Plant development
Plant genes
Mutation