Tag: Genetics

Cell division is essential for growth and reproduction. The cell cycle machinery is well conserved between yeast and animals, but whether this conservation extends to the plant lineage is not clear, having diverged over two billion years ago: ample time and opportunity for divergence in sequence and…

Genome modification is a powerful tool, yet precise genome engineering in plants remains challenging. Miki et al. report on the sequential transformation method for gene targeting in Arabidopsis. The parental plants expressing CRISPR/Cas9 under the egg cell- and early embryo-specific DD45 promoter were…

The discovery of semidwarfing genes in wheat and rice was a crucial turning point of the Green Revolution in the late 1960s. The Green Revolution aimed to maintain per capita food supplies worldwide despite the projected doubling of global population by the end of the 20th century. Its main features…

Meiotic drive is essentially a subversion of meiosis such that particular regions or alleles are preferentially favored for transmission to the progeny. Abnormal chromosome 10 (Ab10) is a classic example of meiotic drive in maize that converts heterochromatic chromosomal knobs into motile ‘neocentromeres’.…

Stress due to high heat and drought causes losses in wheat production all over the world. While genetic variation and quantitative trait loci for drought and heat tolerance are known, the genetic loci that underlie tolerance to these combined stress are likely different from those that underlie each…

Meiotic recombination is an important source of genetic diversity by allowing the reshuffling of parental alleles during meiosis. It requires the generation of DNA double-strand breaks (DSBs) initiated by the activity of the SPO11 protein complex. In plants, the impact of chromatin structure and DNA…

Ercoli et al. investigate how GIF genes control root development https://doi.org/10.1105/tpc.17.00856 By María Florencia Ercoli and Javier Palatnik Background: Plants, unlike animals, have the ability to generate new organs throughout their life cycle. This capacity relies on meristems, which…

Zhang et al. show that GIF1 regulates the determinacy of meristems and controls tassel architecture in maize. The Plant Cell (2018). https://doi.org/10.1105/tpc.17.00791 Background: Plant architecture results from a balance of indeterminate and determinate cell fates. Cells with indeterminate fates…