Proceedings of the XLV Italian Society of Agricultural Genetics - SIGA Annual Congress

Salsomaggiore Terme, Italy - 26/29 September, 2001

ISBN 88-900622-1-5

Poster Abstract

EXPRESSION PROFILING DURING EAR DEVELOPMENT IN MAIZE

GALLAVOTTI A., GIANFRANCESCHI L., SARI-GORLA M.

Dipartimento di Genetica e di Biologia dei Microrganismi, Università di Milano

Sexual reproduction is one of the most complex and deeply regulated developmental phase in plant. This process had been studied in details in model plant species such as Arabidopsis thaliana and Anthirrinum majus; these models provide a framework of hierarchical regulatory elements that control the transition from vegetative to reproductive development and finally lead to flower formation. Understanding the genetic and molecular basis of these events is fundamental not only to achieve a comprehensive vision of the reproductive phase, but for the genetic improvement of plant species as well. Here we adopt a genomics approach for the extensive gene expression profiling during female inflorescence development in maize, and for identifying clusters of genes coordinately regulated during this process. Our analisys is conduced on the maize female sterile mutant branched silkless-1 (bd-1), due to a nuclear single recessive mutation and characterized by an abnormal ear development.

Mutant ears are not able to proceed to form floral meristems and present an outgrowth of branches in basal position. Expression profiling is based on the hybridization of DNA microarrays, produced at Arizona University, containing 4980 non redundant ESTs from developing ears. Cy3 and Cy5 labelled cDNAs from mutant and normal ears at different developmental stages are being used in order to identify genes involved in ear and flower development, to define the role of Bd-1 gene and, thanks to appropriate clustering algorithms, to define clusters of similarly regulated genes and assign a function to EST not previously characterized.