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ARS Home » Midwest Area » St. Paul, Minnesota » Plant Science Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #208033
Title: Many maize genes are expressed in an oat background carrying a specific maize chromosome

Author
item CABRAL, CANDIDA - UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA
item SPRINGER, NATHAN - UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA
item Rines, Howard
item PHILLIPS, RONALD - UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA

Submitted to: Maize Genetics Conference Abstracts
Publication Type: Abstract Only
Publication Acceptance Date: 2/21/2007
Publication Date: 3/22/2007
Citation: Cabral, C., Springer, N., Rines, H.W., Phillips, R.L. 2007. Many maize genes are expressed in an oat background carrying a specific maize chromosome [abstract]. In: 49th Maize Genetics Conference Abstracts. 49th Annual Maize Genetics Conference, March 22-25, 2007, St. Charles, IL. p. 112.

Interpretive Summary:

Technical Abstract: Oat-maize addition (OMA) lines are derived from oat x maize sexual hybrids in which individual maize chromosomes have been retained in plants containing a full complement of oat chromosomes. Many of the OMA lines display specific phenotypes, which indicate that maize genes are likely expressed and capable of altering the phenotype of oat plants. We employed Affymetrix microarrays to determine the frequency of expression for maize genes in an alien background and whether independently derived OMA lines for the same chromosome expressed the same maize genes. We utilized seedling tissue of three OMA lines containing chromosome 5 from the B73 maize inbred line in two oat backgrounds. We identified a set of 438 non-redundant maize genes that were expressed in at least one of the three OMA lines. We found that 96% (420/438) of the genes displayed expression in all three lines. Comparison of expression levels for maize genes in an OMA background with expression levels in B73 maize seedlings revealed that about 24% of the maize chromosome 5 genes that were expressed in maize seedlings were also expressed in the OMA seedlings. Among the genes with no detectable expression in OMA lines, many were highly expressed in maize seedlings. We annotated the non-redundant gene set with regards to map position and putative function. In total, 222 genes had positional information available, and the majority mapped either to chromosome 5 (62%) or chromosomes that share homology with it (17%). We did not find evidence for active or silenced chromosomal domains; neither did we detect a significant over-representation of any specific GO annotation in the non-redundant gene set. So far, we have gathered evidence that a consistent set of maize genes was expressed in seedling tissue across independently derived chromosome 5 OMA lines, regardless of background, chromosome location, or putative function.