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Letters to Nature

Nature 366, 276-279 (18 November 1993) | doi:10.1038/366276a0; Accepted 9 September 1993

Cloning and expression of cytochrome P450 genes controlling flower colour

Timothy A. Holton*, Filippa Brugliera*, Diane R. Lester*†, Yoshikazu Tanaka‡, Craig D. Hyland*, John G. T. Menting*†, Chin-Yi Lu*, Eliane Farcy§, Trevor W. Stevenson*† & Edwina C. Cornish*

  1. * Calgene Pacific Pty Ltd, 16 Gipps Street, Collingwood, Victoria 3066, Australia
  2. ‡ Suntory Ltd, 1-1-1 Wadayamadai, Shimamoto-Cho, Mishima-Gun, Osaka 618, Japan
  3. §INRA, Station de génétique et d'amelioration des plantes, BV 1540, 21034 Dijon cédex, France
  4. †Present addresses: CSIRO Postharvest Laboratory, North Ryde, New South Wales 2113, Australia (D.R.L); La Trobe University, Bundoora, Victoria 3083, Australia (J.G.T.M.); Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Melbourne 3001, Australia (T.W.S.).
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BLUE and violet flowers generally contain derivatives of delphinidin; red and pink flowers generally contain derivatives of cyanidin or pelargonidin1.Differences in hydroxylation patterns of these three major classes of anthocyanidins are controlled by the cytochrome P450 enzymes flavonoid 3'-hydroxylase and flavonoid 3',5'-hydroxylase. Here we report on the isolation of complementary DNA clones of two different flavonoid 3',5'-hydroxylase genes that are expressed in petunia flowers. Restriction-fragment length polymorphism mapping and complementation of mutant petunia lines showed that the flavonoid 3',5'-hydroxylase genes correspond to the genetic loci Hfl and Hf2.