Plant & Animal Genomes XVIII Conference

January 9-13, 2010
Town & Country Convention Center
San Diego, CA

Gramene’s Genetic Diversity Module: A Case Study In Flowering Time Variation Across Three Plant Species

Charles Chen¹ , Genevieve DeClark¹ , Terry Casstevens² , Peter Bradbury³ , Ken Youens-Clark⁴ , Immanuel Yap¹ , Chih-Wei Tung¹ , Doreen Ware⁴ , Susan McCouch¹ , Edward Buckler^1,2,3

¹  Department of Plant Breeding and Genetics, Cornell University, 240 Emerson Hall, Ithaca, New York, 14853-1901, USA

²  Institute For Genomic Diversity, Cornell University, 130 Biotechnology Building, Ithaca, New York, 14853-2703 USA

³  United States Department of Agriculture- Agriculture Research Service (USDA-ARS), Robert W. Holley Center, Ithaca, New York, 14853, USA

⁴  Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, 1 Bungtown Road, Cold Spring Harbor, New York, 11724, USA

Flowering time is an important adaptive character which greatly impacts yield and grain quality in crop plants. Although the genetic basis of flowering time variation has been most intensively studied in the temperate, model dicot system, Arabidopsis, the availability of full genome sequences and genome-wide association studies in both maize and rice provide new insights into how genes and gene family members have been recruited to perform similar functions in the flowering time pathways of these tropical grass species. Taking advantage of Gramene’s Genetic Diversity module with its expert-curated, web-accessible data resources and analysis packages, we demonstrate the power of this database environment for elucidating both conserved and divergent genetic mechanisms underlying complex trait variation in plant species.
All data and statistics programs are available via www.gramene.org