#Natural gene selection can produce orange corn rich in Provitamin a for Africa, U s. Purdue researchers have identified a set of genes that can be used to naturally boost the Provitamin a content of corn kernels a finding that could help combat Vitamin a deficiency in developing countries and macular degeneration in the elderly.
Professor of agronomy Torbert Rocheford and fellow researchers found gene variations that can be selected to change nutritionally poor white corn into biofortified orange corn with high levels of Provitamin a carotenoids--substances
that the human body can convert into Vitamin a. Vitamin a plays key roles in eye health and the immune system as well as in the synthesis of certain hormones.
and the U s. Identifying the genes that determine carotenoid levels in corn kernels will help plant breeders develop novel biofortifed corn varieties for Africa
Previous research by Rocheford and his colleagues identified two genes that contribute to Provitamin a carotenoid levels in corn kernels
and assess the potential usefulness of genes associated with carotenoid levels in corn. They evaluated data sets from about 200 genetically diverse lines of corn at varying scopes of investigation--from the entire corn genome to stretches of DNA surrounding small sets of genes.
They uncovered four genes that had not previously been linked to carotenoid levels in corn kernels.
Though many genes likely contribute to carotenoid levels in corn we're pretty confident that our previous and current research has identified now several genes that are the major players Rocheford said.
Their study found that a combination of visually selecting corn with darker orange kernels and using a number of these favorable genes could be an effective way to rapidly convert white and yellow corn varieties to orange corn with higher levels of Provitamin a and total carotenoids.
We now have the genetic information needed to begin developing a major public-private sector collaboration with the goal of providing orange corn with high levels of Provitamin a to farmers throughout Sub-saharan africa he said.
The study also showed that using a more targeted approach to predicting the usefulness of a small set of genes was as effective as evaluating the whole corn genome said Brenda Owens doctoral candidate and first author of the study.
Having this smaller list of genes to select for means that we can make the improvement of carotenoid levels in corn a simpler faster process for plant breeders she said.
Where previously only the location of the genes on the genome and some of the gene variants were known a large part of the total variation has now been identified
We have used already data from the project to identify variations in genes that are associated with both embryo death
and combined the genetic variations with computer modeling techniques to map how important genes differ within balsam poplar
which genes control climate adaptation and how these vary between individuals. This type of modeling of variation in genetic makeup represents an important advance in understanding how climate change may impact biodiversity.
Genome sequencing revealed that the isolated B. pumilus contained three unique gene clusters for the production of antimicrobial peptide compounds known as bacteriocins.
Determining target genesthe expression of specific genes in a particular root cell determine its fate--the zone in which it will function Subramanian explained so he is identifying
Micro-RNA regulates the levels of the target gene's activity he explained. This means keeping its activity under a particular threshold confining the activity to specific cell types
When the genome of the black Perigord truffle was mapped in 2010 we thought that the fungus had sufficient genes to create its flavour on its own junior professor Richard Splivallo from the Institute for Molecular Life sciences at the Goethe University explained.
and the encoding genes that are responsible for the detoxification process in the fall armyworm. They also want to look for equivalent enzymes in related species and compare these.
In a first-of-its kind study that combined molecular and environmental data professor Meng-Hua Li et al. performed a search for genes under environmental selection from domesticated sheep breeds.
These were used to identify 17 genes that are involved in energy metabolism endocrine and autoimmune regulation.
One particular gene candidate TBC1D12 had a pattern of global distribution indicating that variants were deleterious in hot equatorial climates
In looking for biofuels microbes in the cow rumen we found that Prevotella bryantii a bacterium that is known to efficiently break down (the plant fiber) hemicellulose gears up production of one gene more than others
When searching a database for similar genes in other organisms the researchers found them in microbes from the human gut.
We have found that this gene is required for many many different physiological processes such as drought toleranceâ#he said. â#oewe observed that mutant plants are drought susceptible as well as susceptible to insect feeding.
Kim compared these lines to determine which genes and proteins account for tolerance. When Kim returned in July for his second three-month stay he brought seeds from two Korean lines--Sukang
If the same proteins are expressed differentially in Glover's varieties Kim will validate the genes he identified as important to tolerance in his Korean varieties.
If it is related to tolerance the same gene should be in other tolerant varieties. Kim added.
At that level we know the gene is expressed in the same way. His work at SDSU will decrease the time it takes to improve preharvest sprouting tolerance in Korean white wheat.
Although it is fragmented a very sample the gene sequence offers very interesting information Miguel PÃ rez-Enciso says.
because it is missing a duplicated KIT gene which would make it this colour. This coincides with the majority of paintings from that period in
Using DNA sequencing technology housed at the UO's Genomics Core Facility scientists sequenced the bacterial 16s RIBOSOMAL RNA gene isolated from the samples.
That gene which biologists call a barcode gene allowed researchers to identify and measure the diversity of bacteria based on millions of DNA fragments produced from bacterial communities collected from the surfaces of leaves said Jessica Green a professor at both the UO and Santa fe Institute.
Our ability to use molecular techniques like 16s RIBOSOMAL RNA gene sequencing to characterize nearly all of the bacteria on a leaf is going to make it possible to see how very different members of forest communities interact said Wright.
#Mystery of cereal grain defense explainedcrop scientists at Washington state University have explained how genes in the barley plant turn on defenses against aging and stressors like drought heat and disease.
Professor Diter von Wettstein and assistant research professor Sachin Rustgi showed that specific genes act as a switch that enables barley to live longer
Von Wettstein and Rustgi discovered that two barley genes called JIP60 and JIP60-like play a major role in the protective actions triggered by a key plant defense hormone called jasmonate or JA.
Rustgi said it was a surprise to discover that the JIP60 genes are connected also to boron sensitivity and disease resistance in cereal grains.
The genes lie in close proximity to these other plant traits providing a unique target for future crop breeding programs.
#Most famous wheat gene discovered, clears way for non-GMO breedingwashington State university researchers have found the most famous wheat gene a reproductive traffic cop of sorts that can be used to transfer valuable genes from other plants
The real exciting part of this gene is that it has tremendous potential for application said Kulvinder Gill a WSU professor who reports his findings in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
For some 35 million years the wild ancestors of wheat routinely traded genes as they accidentally crossbred with each other.
Instead of being diploid with two sets of chromosomes like humans and most other living things it became polyploid with in the case of bread wheat seven sets of six related chromosomes.
Starting in 1958 just five years after the discovery of DNA's double-helix structure researchers suspected that a specific gene controls the orderly pairing of wheat chromosomes during reproduction.
If this gene was not present there would be chaos in the nucleus said Gill.
Six chromosomes would pair with each other and sometimes five chromosomes would go to one cell and one to the other resulting in a sterile plant.
Because of this gene wheat can be fertile. Without this gene it would be more like sugar cane where it is a mess in the nucleus
and it can only be propagated vegetatively. But the gene also prevents wheat from breeding with related ancestors that can contain a vast array of traits preferred by growers.
This gene would not allow rye chromosomes to pair with wheat said Gill. We cannot get a single gene transfer into wheat
as long as this gene is present. Interest in the gene called Ph1 has spawned scores of research papers making it
what Gill called the most famous wheat gene. In 2006 British researchers writing in the journal Nature said they identified the gene.
In this paper said Gill we show that their gene is not the Ph1. Knowing their findings would be controversial Gill
and his colleagues spent a year repeating the experiments that led to their conclusion. They are now moving on.
Now that we have the gene we can actually use that gene sequence to temporarily silence the gene
and make rye and other chromosomes pair with wheat and transfer genes by a natural method into wheat without calling it GMO Gill said.
Their first effort involves transferring a gene from jointed goatgrass a wild relative of wheat to confer resistance to stripe rust.
The fungus is considered the world's most economically damaging wheat pathogen costing U s. farmers alone some $500 million in lost productivity in 2012.
While facilitated by technology the actual exchange of genetic material is similar to what has taken long place in nature only faster.
Incorporating the gene transfer into the overall breeding process researchers can develop a new variety in five years said Gill.
If we let wheat evolve for another few millions years in the wild maybe it will develop enough variation
but we don't have that kind of time said Gill. We need to solve this problem today.
Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by Washington state University. The original article was written by Eric Sorensen.
Study finds important genes in defense responsewhen corn plants come under attack from a pathogen they sometimes respond by killing their own cells near the site of the attack committing cell suicide to thwart further damage from the attacker.
Researchers at North carolina State university have identified a number of candidate genes and cellular processes that appear to control this so-called hypersensitive defense response (HR) in corn.
The 44 candidate genes appear to be involved in defense response programmed cell death cell wall modification
because one particular resistance gene Rp1-D21 doesn't turn off. It's similar to a human having an autoimmune response that never stops Balint-Kurti says.
The researchers examined the entire corn gene blueprint--some 26.5 million points in the 2 to 3 billion base pair genome--to find the genes most closely associated with HR.
All of the processes associated with the top candidate genes have been associated previously with HR Balint-Kurti said.
A particular worry is unaddressed that the need for management of evolution that spans multiple sectors will lead to the spread of new infectious diseases and antimicrobial resistance genes between natural human health and agricultural systems.
of which have value as gene donors for crop improvement. However until now the full range of these potentially valuable CWR species had not been identified.
and via gene banks to ensure their wealth of resilient characteristics are available to plant breeders.
while taking samples and placing them in gene banks as a safety back up where the genetic material can be kept for up to 300 years.
'It is very important that we conserve these species in secure gene banks but it is critical to conserve them in their natural habitat as they will continue to adapt to changes in the climate as well as threats from pests and diseases.''
and positions of genes in the coffee plant show that they evolved independently from genes with similar functions in tea and chocolate
In other words coffee did not inherit caffeine-linked genes from a common ancestor but instead developed the genes on its own.
The findings will appear on Sept. 5 in the journal Science. Why Coffee? With more than 2. 25 billion cups consumed daily worldwide coffee is the principal agricultural product of many tropical countries.
By looking at the coffee genome and genes specific to coffee we were able to draw some conclusions about
and tomato coffee harbors larger families of genes that relate to the production of alkaloid
Upon taking a closer look the researchers found that coffee's caffeine enzymes are more closely related to other genes within the coffee plant than to caffeine enzymes in tea and chocolate.
By looking at which families of genes expanded in the plant and the relationship between the genome structure of coffee and other species we were able to learn about coffee's independent pathway in evolution including--excitingly--the story of caffeine.
Instead it maintained a structure similar to the grape's. As such evolutionary diversification of the coffee genome was driven likely more by duplications in particular gene families as opposed to en masse when all genes in the genome duplicate.
An international team of scientists has made now a breakthrough by showing that many genes controlling the development of the brain
Rabbit domestication has occurred primarily by altering the frequencies of gene variants that were already present in the wild ancestor.
Our data shows that domestication primarily involved small changes in many genes and not drastic changes in a few genes states Kerstin Lindblad-Toh co-senior author Director of Vertebrate Genome
The team observed very few examples where a gene variant common in domestic rabbits had replaced completely the gene variant present in wild rabbits;
if you release domestic rabbits into the wild there is an opportunity for back selection at those genes that have been altered during domestication
The scientists found no example where a gene has been inactivated during rabbit domestication and there were many more changes in the non-coding part of the genome than in the parts of the genome that codes for protein.
which genes they carry but how their genes are regulated i e. when and how much of each gene is used in different cells explains Miguel Carneiro.
The study also revealed which genes that have been altered during domestication. The researchers were amazed by the strong enrichment of genes involved in the development of the brain
and the nervous system among the genes particularly targeted during domestication. But that of course makes perfect sense in relation to the drastic changes in behaviour between wild and domestic rabbits concludes Kerstin Lindblad-Toh.
The study shows that the wild rabbit is a highly polymorphic species that carries gene variants that were favourable during domestication
and that the accumulation of many small changes led to the inhibition of the strong flight response--one of the most prominent phenotypic changes in the evolution of the domestic rabbitwe predict that a similar process has occurred in other domestic animals
and that we will not find a few specific domestication genes that were critical for domestication. It is very likely that a similar diversity of gene variants affecting the brain
and the nervous system occurs in the human population and that contributes to differences in personality
and behaviour says Leif Andersson. Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by Uppsala University.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. Journal References e
#Less than $200 million would conserve precious Atlantic Forest in Brazil, say researchersbrazil could conserve its valuable Atlantic Forest by investing just 0. 01 per cent of its annual GDP according to a new study.
#Water thermostat could help engineer drought-resistant cropsduke University researchers have identified a gene that could help scientists engineer drought-resistant crops.
The gene called OSCA1 encodes a protein in the cell membrane of plants that senses changes in water availability
and hundreds of genes are involved. The problem is confounded by the fact that drought is accompanied often by heat waves
Pei and Duke colleagues Fang Yuan James Siedow and others identified a gene that encodes a protein in the cell membranes of plant leaves
The gene was identified in Arabidopsis thaliana a small unassuming plant related to cabbage and canola that is the lab rat of plant research.
and plants with defective versions of the gene side by side in the same pot and exposed them to drought stress the mutant plants experienced more wilting.
The team's next step is to manipulate the activity of the OSCA1 gene and related genes and see how those plants respond to drought--information that could lead to crops that respond more quickly and efficiently to dehydration.
Plants that enter drought-fighting mode quickly and then switch back to normal growth mode quickly when drought stress is gone should be able to allocate energy more efficiently toward growth Pei said.
The shift from an approach focused on single candidate genes to the large-scale computational approach analyzing all of them is made possible by the availability of the poplar genome
and light levels and they examined variation in those genes as they vary across environmental gradients.
what genes fall under those fingerprints. Watch a video of Tuskan on the importance of selection in trees at http://bit. ly/Tuskan14fingerprints.
and 45000 genes to figuring out what's not just statistically significant but biologically meaningful wasn't easy said study first author Luke Evans of West Virginia University.
and selection such that the alleles or gene variants that we have identified have great promise to provide robust long-term improvements to biofuel feedstocks.
That's a massive number of naturally occurring variants a lot in cell wall chemistry genes and other known productivity genes.
The researchers also identified specific mutations in genes important in adaptation to factors such as climate
Before scientists sequenced its genes people assumed that chickens and all birds taste things the same way that mammals do:
The gene for tasting sweetness is present in their genomes but it's nonfunctional. Scientists suspect that an interplay between taste receptors
It has no trace of a sweet-taste receptor gene. Faced with this all-or-nothing scenario Maude Baldwin co-first author of the paper had one reaction.
After cloning the genes for taste receptors from chickens swifts and hummingbirds--a three-year process--Baldwin needed to test what the proteins expressed by these genes were responding to.
She joined forces with another scientist at another International Taste and Smell meeting. Yasuka Toda a graduate student of the University of Tokyo and co-first author of the paper had devised a method for testing taste receptors in cell culture.
and hummingbird taste receptors into hybrid chimeras to understand which parts of the gene were involved in this change in function.
and are capable of activating genes that change the protein composition in the cell. A team of scientists--headed by Prof.
The scientists believe that the CES transcription factor collects in specific regions of the DNA in order to effectively control gene function.
and while two individuals with the same phenotype may look alike their genes may differ substantially.
Several of these regions contained genes known to be involved with growth in humans. They then studied these regions to look for indications that the changes were persisted ones that
The results of the genetic comparison indicated that there was a statistical difference between the two groups indicative of multi gene adaptation.
The first advance was the ability to produce genetically engineered pigs as a source of donor organs by NHLBI's collaborator Revivicor Inc. The pigs had the genes that cause adverse immunologic reactions in humans knocked out and human
genes that make the organ more compatible with human physiology were inserted. The second advance was the use of target-specific immunosuppression
The gene that synthesizes the enzyme alpha 1-3 galactosidase transferase was knocked out in all piglets
The researchers found that in one group with a human gene) the average transplant survival was more than 200 days dramatically surpassing the survival times of the other three groups (average survival 70 days 21 days
This longest-surviving group was the only one that had the human thrombomodulin gene added to the pigs'genome.
or species. These markers are genes or DNA sequences with known locations on a chromosome.
Genomic prediction differs from traditional predictions in that it skips the marker-detection step. The method simply uses all markers of the entire genome to predict a trait.
But many economically important traits are controlled by a large number of genes with small effects. Because the genomic prediction model captures all these small-effect genes predictability is improved vastly.
Without genomic prediction breeders must grow all possible crosses in the field to select the best cross (hybrid.
In genetics dominance describes the joint action of two different alleles (copies) of a gene.
For example if one copy of a gene has a value of 1 and the other copy has a value of 2 the joint effect of the two alleles may be 4 indicating that the two alleles are not additive.
In this case dominance has occurred. Epistasis refers to any type of gene-gene interaction. By incorporating dominance
and epistasis we took into account all available information for prediction Xu said. It led to a more accurate prediction of a trait value.
and other crops might be improved genetically without the need to introduce foreign genes according to researchers writing in the Cell Press publication Trends in Biotechnology on August 13th.
The simple avoidance of introducing foreign genes makes genetically edited crops more natural than transgenic crops obtained by inserting foreign genes said Chidananda Nagamangala Kanchiswamy of Istituto Agrario San Michele in Italy.
Most transgenic fruit crop plants have been developed using a plant bacterium to introduce foreign genes and only papaya has been commercialized in part because of stringent regulation in the European union (EU). The researchers say that genetically edited plants modified through the insertion deletion
or altering of existing genes of interest might even be deemed as nongenetically modified depending on the interpretation of the EU commission and member state regulators.
Transfer of foreign genes was the first step to improve our crops but GEOS will surge as a natural strategy to use biotechnology for a sustainable agricultural future.
which is both environmentally friendly and effective. â#The Oxitec method works by introducing a female-specific gene into the insects that interrupts development before females reach a reproductive stage.
If genetics do play a role she suspects multiple genes may interact with environmental factors to determine tolerance;
and Institute for Genomic Biology director Gene Robinson who also led the new analysis . When he and his colleagues looked at brain gene activity in honey bees after they had faced down an intruder the team found that some metabolic genes were suppressed.
These genes play a key role in the most efficient type of energy generation in cells a process called oxidative phosphorylation.
It was a counterintuitive finding because these genes were regulated down Robinson said. You tend to think of aggression as requiring more energy not less.
In the new study postdoctoral researcher Clare Rittschof used drugs to suppress key steps in oxidative phosphorylation in the bee brains.
In a Phd project at the National Food Institute Technical University of Denmark the latest technologies within whole genome sequencing were exploited to develop new methods to identify genes which are important for the survival of MRSA in pigs.
which can identify genes important for the survival of MRSA in pigs. High-throughput approaches can identify those genes in the total gene pool of the bacteria
which are essential or the presence of which is advantageous for the bacteria under some given circumstances.
By studying which genes are essential for the bacteria in pigs it may be possible for researchers to identify the factors important for the bacterium to colonise on pigs.
They do this by changing their genes either by mutating or by transferring resistance genes among themselves.
It is therefore important not to overconsume antibiotics but only to use the necessary amount.
or glycolate two products of the gene DJ-1 can stop and even counteract this process:
and Genetics with rather different research programs--but both happened to stumble upon the gene DJ-1 and joined forces.
This gene originally thought of as an oncogene has been linked to Parkinson's disease since 2003. Recent studies showed that DJ-1 belongs to a novel glyxolase family.
The major function of these genes is assumed to detoxify aggressive aldehyde by-products from mitochondrial metabolism. The Dresden research team now showed that the products of DJ-1 D-lactate
The study was conducted by Gene Towne research associate and the Konza Prairie Biological Station fire chief and Joseph Craine research assistant professor both in the Division of Biology.
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