Decoding rice flowering with proximity proteomics

Flowering regulation in rice involves a complex induction pathway that senses environmental inputs in the leaves and transmits signals, called florigens, to the shoot apical meristem (SAM) to induce reproductive differentiation. A recently characterized florigen-like protein, FTL1, was found to contribute to SAM differentiation during inflorescence and panicle development. An innovative proteomic approach, known as Proximity labelling (PL), is used, for the first time in rice, on FTL1 to explore the transient interactome involved in the flowering developmental switch. Future research is aimed at expanding knowledge on FTL1 and its interactors, by performing additional PL proteomics, validation and subcellular localization experiments. With these data, we aim to demonstrate that PL can expand our understanding of how the rice flowering regulating network works and potentially reacts to environmental changes. The obtained data could be also used as a resource to maximize breeding of cultivated rice.