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ARS Home » Midwest Area » Columbia, Missouri » Plant Genetics Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #237217
Title: Construction of a Rye BAC Library for Utilization in Physical Mapping of an Aluminum Tolerance Gene Complex

Author
item Gustafson, J
item SHI, BU-JUN - UNIV OF ADELAIDE-AUSTRALI

Submitted to: International Atomic Energy Agency
Publication Type: Other
Publication Acceptance Date: 3/3/2009
Publication Date: N/A
Citation: N/A

Interpretive Summary:

Technical Abstract: Aluminium, the most abundant metal on earth, is highly toxic to plant growth and is found in about 2.5 billion hectares of acid soils, including more than 130 million hectares in the United States. Many of the world’s farmers are living on marginal soils that offer a stressful environment for plant growth, therefore, the development of cereal cultivars capable of improved production on marginal and stressful soils is needed. Cultivated rye is the world’s most acid soil tolerant cereal. A very important question centers on the nature of the gene complexes in rye and how they affect the growth on acid soils. A series of experiments were designed to characterize the presence and location of malate transporter (ALMT) genes thought to contribute to the up-regulation of aluminum tolerance expression in rye. The results suggested that there is considerable variation in the copy number and chromosome location of ALMT gene complexes in rye. A major resource for use in gene cloning, physical mapping, genome sequencing, and comparative genomics are collections of genomic DNA constructed in Bacterial Artificial Chromosomes (BACs) that can be stored and utilized by researchers at will. The present study also designed and established a rye BAC library that contains very large DNA fragments from every rye chromosome, which was used to analyze and characterize a genetic locus that controls aluminum tolerance in rye. Extensive modifications were made to existing techniques to produce very large stable DNA inserts from rye and by extension any other target plant. Sequence analysis of a BAC clone from the library identified the presence of at least two different ALMT gene complexes that varied in gene copy number and their effect on the expression of aluminum tolerance in rye. In addition, a number of DNA sequence inserts and deletions within the ALMT gene complexes were identified. The large BAC library for rye is publically available for use in cereal improvement.