Various genetic interactions of GIGANTEA and EARLY FLOWERING 4 by a functional dominance during a day in Arabidopsis

Plants use their endogenous clock to regulate many physiological processes related to their survival and adaptability. GIGANTEA (GI), one of the clock proteins, contributes to the maintenance of circadian period length and amplitude and also regulates flowering time and hypocotyl growth in response to day length. In addition to GI, EARLY FLOWERING 4 (ELF4), another clock regulator, also contributes to these processes. However, little is known about the overall interactions between GI and ELF4 in Arabidopsis. In this study, we investigated the genetic interactions between GI and ELF4 in circadian output regulation. The results show that GI is dominant to ELF4 in flowering time determination, but ELF4 is dominant to GI in hypocotyl growth regulation. Moreover, GI and ELF4 have a synergistic effect on endogenous clock regulation. Further, gene expression profiling of gi-2, elf4, and gi-2 elf4 mutants confirmed that GI and ELF4 had differential dominant effects on circadian physiological outputs at dawn and dusk, respectively. This differential dominance of GI and ELF4 provides a potential means to achieve the diversity in the regulation of circadian physiological outputs including flowering time and hypocotyl growth. The genetic interactions between GI and ELF4 could be time-dependent functional dominance along a day, called temporal dominance hereafter. To test this hypothesis, we performed gene expression profiling of WT, gi-2, elf4 and gi elf4 plants at dawn (ZT1) and dusk (ZT16).