Figure 1

Experimental design. (a) Floral developing process by morphological and ultrastructure (scanning electron microscopy, SEM) observation. White arrows in short-pod-branches indicate apical meristem where pistillate floral buds initiate. Eight samples in timing order, namely S1, S2, S3, S4, S5, S6, S7, S8. Mixed pistillate flower buds of S1-S5 and S6-S8 namely SampleA and SampleB, respectively. M, meristem. LP, leaf primordia. FP, flower primordia. BP, bract primordia. CP, carpel primordia. SampleA and SampleB were carried out to do 454 transcriptome sequencing, respectively. Sequenced reads were assembled to contigs. Microarrays were designed which probes came from all of contigs. Microarrays are hybridized with cDNA at eight time point of S1-S8, respectively. (b) Ambient temperature record of at each stage. (c) CcLFY expression by QRT-PCR as a reference to explore the turning point of floral determination at the molecular level. (d) Number of genes differential expression over flower development.