Plant & Animal Genomes XIV Conference

January 14-18, 2006
Town & Country Convention Center
San Diego, CA

Flowering Gene Homologues And Their Localization In Forage Genome

Andrew Gunderson¹ , Malay Saha² , Thomas Gonnella¹ , Kathleen Champion¹ , Khwaja G Hossain¹

¹  Mayville State University, Mayville, ND 58257, USA

²  Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation, Ardmore, OK, USA

Tall fescue (Festuca aurandinacea Schreb.) is the most valuable perennial forage species in the United States and the stage of harvest time maturity is one of the most important factors affecting fescue hay quality. The biology of flowering genes in forage species and their regulation has important implications for the improvement of this species. Thirty-six flowering related genes with four major floral promotion pathways have been identified in Arabidopsis. It has been predicted that about 85% of Arabidopsis genes are present in the distantly related plants, thus flowering genes information in Arabidopsis can usually be exploit in any plant of interest. We have taken initiatives to explore the flowering genes information of Arabidopsis. Initially, we have analyzed the intron and exon positions of twenty-four flowering genes involving different flowering pathways. Ninety-six overlapping PCR primers from the exon sequences of these genes have been generated. These primers were screened against a panel containing DNA from Arabidopsis and parents of a population of tall fescue developed for mapping flowering genes. Over 80% of these primers produced amplified products in forage species. We are in the process of sequencing amplified products and molecular markers like SNP, SSR, and STS will be developed from sequences of these genes in forage species. The objectives of this project are to understand the regulatory pathways of flowering in forage species and localization of flowering related regions in the forge genome.