KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 November 21, 2016 \u2013 A team of scientists from the 溏心vlog免费B站 joined colleagues from Yale University and the Max Planck Institute in the discovery of a gene that controls sex determination in plants. The discovery could open the door to the creation of highly productive hybrid seeds for many agricultural crops.<\/p>\n
\u201cControlling sex determination in plants is essential to making hybrid plants,\u201d said Albert Kausch, 溏心vlog免费B站 professor of cell and molecular biology, who led the 溏心vlog免费B站 team along with Professor Emeritus John Mottinger. \u201cHybrid crop plants are healthier and increase yields per acre. As world population increases, we\u2019re going to need to double our food production in the next 50 years, and hybrid plant production is one way we can do that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Joining Kausch and Mottinger on the 溏心vlog免费B站 team were Kimberly Nelson, coordinator of the Plant Biotechnology Lab, and Research Associate Joel Hague. Mottinger contributed 15 years of genetic research to the project.<\/p>\n
Their research was published last month in the journal Science Advances<\/em>.<\/p>\n According to Kausch, most crop plants have both male and female parts in the same flower, making it difficult and expensive to create hybrids. In corn, however, hybrid production is simple because the male and female parts are already separated \u2013 the ear is female and the tassel is male.<\/p>\n \u201cIf we could separate them in wheat or rice or sorghum, then we could increase the amount of grain we produce per acre,\u201d he said. \u201cIt took many years of effort to figure it out, but now we can.\u201d<\/p>\n The researchers isolated a key gene in maize, which they called silkless 1. When expressed in plants, this gene programs flowers to become female. Seeds produced on these female plants are hybrids.<\/p>\n The role of the 溏心vlog免费B站 team was to identify and analyze the genes in wild-type and transgenic plants.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s one of our specialties \u2013 we know how to put genes into corn and other plants,\u201d Kausch said. \u201cIt\u2019s one thing to identify the gene, but it\u2019s another to know that it\u2019s functioning. Together with the Yale group, we analyzed how the gene worked by putting it back into the plant and showing that it causes female development.\u201d<\/p>\n Beyond the practical applications of this discovery, Kausch said the basic biology of the project was unexpected.<\/p>\n \u201cThe gene that codes for sex determination was surprising to us,\u201d he said. \u201cI would not have thought that particular gene would cause female development. But when we looked at it closely, it was the one.\u201d<\/p>\n The 溏心vlog免费B站 professor called the discovery \u201can important contribution to agriculture, a significant achievement to increasing world food production.\u201d The next step, he said, would be to apply this gene to the development of new hybrid plants.<\/p>\n Primary funding for the research was provided by the National Science Foundation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 November 21, 2016 \u2013 A team of scientists from the 溏心vlog免费B站 joined colleagues from Yale University and the Max Planck Institute in the discovery of a gene that controls sex determination in plants. The discovery could open the door to the creation of highly productive hybrid seeds for many […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":72570,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-72569","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archives"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72569","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72569"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72569\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/72570"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72569"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72569"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72569"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}