Beyond the ABCs: ternary complex formation in the control of floral organ identity

The production of a flower requires several events to occur. A floral meristem must form, boundaries must be set to enable discrete primordia to arise and the primordia must adopt the correct organ identity. Homeotic mutants, whose organs adopt inappropriate identities for their position within the flower, have helped the construction of a simple combinatorial model to explain how floral organ identity is defined. However, recent experiments suggest that the regulation of floral organ identity is more complex than was previously apparent. The simple interactions are becoming more complex and the universal applicability of the model less clear.