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Submitted to: Meeting Abstract
Publication Type: Abstract Only Publication Acceptance Date: 5/23/2004 Publication Date: 5/23/2004 Citation: Slovin, J.P. 2004. Further development of diploid strawberry as a model test system. Meeting Abstract. Paper No. 13. Interpretive Summary: Technical Abstract: Our lab has initiated a project to determine if specific proteins expressed by strawberry in response to heat stress function as part of the thermotolerance system and if they do, to evaluate the potential for utilizing these proteins to improve crop stress responses. Specifically, we are developing better tools for investigating the role of heat shock proteins (HSPs) or other gene products in strawberry thermotolerance. These tools include an inbred diploid testing system, assays for thermotolerance that have physiological and/or agricultural relevance, EST sequence data with which to construct a small microarray for assaying the stress state of experimental plants, and molecular markers for heat tolerance. We have developed an inbred line, 5AF7, of Fragaria vesca to use for testing gene function because the diploid genome is small (164Mbp), the life cycle of the plant is short ( about 4 months), the plant size is small (a plant will produce fruit in a 4 inch pot), some genetic work is already done, Fragaria vesca is transformable with Agrobacterium tumefasciens, and results should be transferable to the commercial octoploid varieties. Using over- and under-expression analysis, the inbred line will be useful to test genes for function in pathogen resistance, flavor and nutrient composition, and plant development as well as stress responses. We have also begun to accumulate EST sequences by single pass sequencing random clones from a cDNA library made to RNA from heat-treated Fragaria vesca seedlings. The library was constructed in the pCMVsport6.1 vector to facilitate further work using Gateway technology. So far, we have EST sequence data for 7 HSPs and two heat shock factors. We have obtained additional sequences for other HSPs by PCR using degenerate primers designed from homologous genes sequences in GenBank. |
