FLOWERING LOCUS C, or FLC, encodes a floral repressor in Arabidopsis thaliana. Prolonged cold can establish a persistently silenced state, connecting chromatin regulation to the memory underlying vernalization.
Natural variation in FLC silencing contributes to differences in cold requirements. Measuring later flowering and the persistence of repression tests memory, whereas measuring expression only during cold does not establish that the regulatory change survives warming.[ref]
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