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ARS Home » Southeast Area » Tifton, Georgia » Crop Protection and Management Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #187414
Title: TRANSCRIPTIONAL PROFILES OF TEX6 MAIZE KERNELS IN RESPONSE TO WATER DEFICIT DURING LATE DEVELOPMENTAL STAGES

Author
item LUO, MENG - UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA
item LEE, R - UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA
item Guo, Baozhu

Submitted to: Plant and Animal Genome Conference Proceedings
Publication Type: Abstract Only
Publication Acceptance Date: 12/5/2005
Publication Date: 1/14/2006
Citation: Luo, M., Lee, R.D., Guo, B. 2006. Transcriptional profiles of tex6 maize kernels in response to water deficit during late developmental stages [abstract]. In: Proceedings of Plant and Animal Genome XIV Conference, January 14-18, 2006, San Diego, CA.

Interpretive Summary:

Technical Abstract: Mechanisms adapted to water stressed environments are widely reported in the maize kernel, but most of them focus on the early stages of kernel development. These stages are sensitive to water deficit, and their failure diminishes the number of kernels. However, researchers have found that environmental factors such as drought and extreme heat can facilitate pathogen-Aspergillus flavus infection of kernel during the late developmental stages, and lead to contamination with the potent carcinogenic mycotoxin- aflatoxin in pre- and post-harvest kernels. One hypothesis is that some metabolic pathways in the kernels were affected under drought stress, and some chemical compounds were produced in favor of fungal infection and toxin formation. The goals of this project are to better understand the changes of gene expression in response to drought stress during late stages of kernel development and to identify the related biochemical pathways and resistant genes. The maize inbred lines of Tex6 and B73 were used in this study. Tex6 has been reported to have resistance to infection of A. flavus and reduced aflatoxin contamination. B73 was included as a susceptible control. Transcriptional profiles of kernels at the 25, 30, 35, 40, 45 days after pollination were compared between samples with and without water deficit using the 70-mer maize oligonucleotide arrays (version 1, ~58,000 sequences) from Maize Oligonuleotide Array Project. Less than 100 genes with putative resistant function were chosen to design primers, and be used to validate the differential expression using real-time RT PCR.