Fig. 1

MtPHYA is expressed broadly and throughout development in Medicago wild type R108 plants. a Relative expression of MtPHYA in tissues of plants grown in long-day (LD) photoperiods. The cotyledons were from 5-d-old seedlings; monofoliate and trifoliate leaves, apical buds and roots from 12-d-old plants; and floral buds (young) and flowers from 86-d-old flowering plants. b Relative transcript abundance of MtPHYA in fully-expanded trifoliate leaves of 14-d-old seedlings grown under LD and short-day (SD) photoperiods. c-d Relative gene expression levels of MtPHYA in leaves (c) and uppermost apical buds, flower buds or open flowers (d) in days after planting in LD. The ♣ in (c-d) indicate that the plants flowered with floral buds first visible at 69 days. Cotyledons were harvested at 5 days while monofoliate leaves (M1) or trifoliate leaves were harvested at the remaining time points. e-fMtPHYA expression in germinated seeds (g. seeds) and in leaves (e) and uppermost shoot apices (f) of plants before vernalization (14d), during vernalization at 4 °C (shaded) with sampling done after 5 days (5VT0 = 5 days in the cold, 0 day warm) and 14 days (14VT0), and after the plants were transferred to warm LD conditions (VsLD) (14VT2 = 2 days in the warm after 14 days of vernalization). The ♣ in (e-f) indicate that the plants flowered with floral buds first visible at 52 days after planting. The tissues in (a-f) were harvested two hours after dawn (ZT2). Gene expression was determined using qRT-PCR with primers 2F and 2R (Additional file 2: Table S1) and is shown as the mean ± se of three biological replicates, normalized to Medicago PP2A and relative to the highest value in (a and b). For c-d and e-f the data is shown relative to the highest value over both tissues. The * indicates significantly different expression from the first data point in (a-d, f) while the ∆ in (e) indicates that the expression in germinated seeds is significantly different from the rest of the data points [multiple pairwise comparisons adjusted for false discovery rate (FDR); α = 0.05]