Colored aleurone1 and Purple plant1 are both genes with long histories in maize research and are involved in the regulation of anthocyanin biosynthesis. The mutant version of purple plant1 does exactly what it sounds like. (In the proper genetic background) it has plants producing anthocyanin (a purple plant pigment) everywhere, resulting in purple plants. The mutant form of colored aleurone1 was identified from a mutant that changed the color of individual corn kernels. The two genes are also duplicates (homeologs) resulting from the maize whole genome duplication. More details, pictures of the mutant plants, a quick and interesting syntenic analysis and the mystery of the missing gene, in the full post.
Posts Tagged ‘grasses’
Oliva Judson’s Salute to Grasses
Talking up Olivia Judson (an English evolutionary biologist who has the trick of getting the general public excited about biology), her post on why grasses are so important in particular, and, for some reason bird’s teeth (they wanted to slip in somewhere).
Why I’m so Excited About the Banana Genome
It looks like this time the banana genome really will be sequenced! The justification for sequencing is the combination of the vital importance of bananas as a source of food in the tropics and their lack of crop breeds since most bananas are sterile and only propagated vegetatively. Banana will be the first non-grass monocot sequenced, which is also awesome for me as a grass genomicist because the genome of the banana will be the new window into what the genome of the ancestor of all grasses might have looked like! But click through to read more!