Plant & Animal Genomes XIII Conference

January 15-19, 2005
Town & Country Convention Center
San Diego, CA

Use Of RNA Interference To Study Gene Function In Medicago truncatula Roots

Sergey I Ivashuta¹ , Maria J Harrison² , Carroll P Vance³ , Kate A VandenBosch¹ , Deborah A Samac⁴ , Ernest F Retzel⁵ , Stephen J Gantt¹

¹  Department of Plant Biology, University of Minnesota, St. Paul, MN 55108

²  Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research, Ithaca, New York 14853

³  Department of Agronomy and Plant Genetics, University of Minnesota, St. Paul, MN 55108

⁴  Department of Plant Pathology, University of Minnesota, St. Paul, MN 55108

⁵  Center for Computational Genomics and Bioinformatics, University of Minnesota, St. Paul, MN 55108

The legume research community has developed many resources around the model legume Medicago truncatula. These resources include a large-scale EST sequencing project that has identified many of the genes that are expressed in roots and are differentially expressed during symbiosis, the development of efficient transformation protocols, and an ongoing genome sequencing project. Using these resources, our recently funded NSF Plant Genome project aims to selectively silence genes via RNA interference (RNAi) for a large-scale functional analysis of gene function in M. truncatula roots. The effects of gene silencing on root development and rhizobial and mycorrhizal symbioses will be examined in transgenic roots. These results will be reported to the research community through a publicly available project website. Our strategy for candidate gene selection, the cloning and transformation procedures and the proposed phenotypic assays will be discussed and preliminary results of our initial screen will be presented.