Isolation of flower inducing gene SbCO in sorghum and construction of an inducible SbCO expression vector

We isolated the coding sequence a putative SbCO gene from Sorghum cultivar, Roma, by in silico sequence analysis and subsequently, reverse-transcription PCR. The DNA sequencing data revealed 92% similarity between SbCO and the Arabidopsis flowering time regulator CONSTANS. To investigate the biological function of SbCO in sorghum, we have constructed an inducible expression vector for SbCO based on Gateway cloning technology. This study lays a solid foundation for future analysis of flowering time control in Sorghum.