Analysis MYB26 gene and male sterile and Anther dehiesence Literature review

Analysis MYB26 gene and male sterile and Anther dehiesence - Literature review Example The Arabidopsis plant produce flowers from April to early June. The plants of this family are known as crucifers due to their uniform flower structure that resembles a ‘cross’ and are also characterized by a fruit named silique which is 5-20mm long with 20-30 seeds. The leaves are alternate (rarely opposite) and sometimes organized in basal rosettes. Figure 1. Arabidopsis thaliana plant: Left, the vegetative stage, before flowering and growth of the floral stalk (bottom left). On the centre an adult plant at full flowering/seed set. On the right, flower, floral stem and seeds. White bars represent 1 cm, except for flower and seeds: 1 mm. (image from http://www-ijpb.versailles.inra.fr/en/arabido/arabido.htm) Taxonomy of A. thaliana Genus Arabidopsis has several species but A. thaliana (L.) Heynh. 2n=10 is the most studied as the model plant. Kingdom: Plantae Order: Brassicales Family: Brassicaceae Genus: Arabidopsis Species: Arabidopsis thaliana (L.) Heynh. Importance of A. thaliana as a model plant Though it has no significant economic value, A. thaliana is widely used as a model plant in studying a wide range of subjects in plant science. This was first proposed as a model plant by Friedrich Laibact in 1943 (Meyerowitz, 2001) and now it is used extensively in studies based on evolution, genetics, population genetics and plant development. It is widely applied in genetic transformation studies, chromosomal analysis, genetic mapping and genome sequencing work. One important trait that makes A. thaliana an ideal model plant in plant science research is its small genome size. It has only five chromosomes with 157 million base pairs (Bennet et al., 2003) and the genetic and physical maps of all five genes are available. This is useful for genetic sequencing and mapping. In fact the first plant genomes sequenced were of A. thaliana in the year 2000 where 115.4 mega bases of the 125mb genome were sequenced (â€Å"Analysis of the genome sequence of the f lowering plant Arabidopsis thaliana†, 2000). Such information provides the basis of understanding molecular biology of many plant traits and research has defined the functions of its 27,000 genes and the 35,000 proteins they encode (Integr8, 2011). In addition, A. thaliana has a short life cycle (six weeks from seed germination to seed maturation), has prolific seed production and the plant can be easily cultivated in restricted space. A. thaliana can be efficiently transformed with Agrobacterium and large number of mutants is available (www.arabidopsis.org). This plant has thus become valuable in genome projects and facilitates molecular level understanding of the biology of a flowering plant. Since Arabidopsis thaliana is similar to many other plants, it is believed that the properties found in Arabidopsis likely to be found in other flowering plants too. Therefore analyzing the structure and functions about Arabidopsis genes will pave the pathway to study about other plant species. Arabidopsis Information Resources (TAIR), located in Carnegie Institute for Science Department of Plant Biology, USA maintain a genetic and molecular biology database of A. thaliana (www.arabidopsis.org). TAIR includes data on complete genome sequence with gene structure, gene product information, metabolism and gene expression, genome maps, genetic and physi