Plant & Animal Genomes XI Conference

January 11-15, 2003
Town & Country Convention Center
San Diego, CA

Workshop: Barley
            

FUNCTIONAL GENOMICS APPROACHES TO ENDOSPERM DEVELOPMENT IN BARLEY, RICE AND MAIZE

¹ Pioneer Hi-Bred International, 7300 NW 62nd Avenue, 50131 Johnston, Iowa, USA

² Agricultural University of Norway, Aas, N-1432, Norway

Nuclear endosperm development is a highly conserved process that is shared by dicots and monocots, including the cereals and Arabidopsis thaliana. Initially, after fertilization, the endosperm goes through a phase of syncytial development, followed by differentiation of the starchy endosperm, the aleurone layer, the transfer cells and the cells of the embryo surrounding region. The focus of our effort is to understand the molecular mechanisms involved in cell fate determination and development of these four cell types. As a core approach, we have used microscopy based screens of mutagenized populations of barley (Na-azid), rice (Ac/Ds) and maize (Robertson’s Mutator) to identify developmental mutants, and to clone the underlying mutant gene. Taken together, our mutant collections cover all steps in cereal endosperm development. Mainly due to the availability of a system for gene cloning and other functional genomics tools in maize, our knowledge about endosperm developmental mechanisms is most advanced in this species. The seminar will present our current state of knowledge on cereal endosperm development as well as to discuss the validity of information from maize to the other cereal species.