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Title: MAPPING MAIZE SEQUENCES TO CHROMOSOMES USING OAT-MAIZE CHROMOSOME ADDITION MATERIALS

Author
item OKAGAKI, RON - UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA
item KYNAST, RALF - UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA
item LIVINGSTON, SUZANNE - UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA
item RUSSELL, CHARLES - UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA
item Rines, Howard
item PHILLIPS, RONALD - UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA

Submitted to: Plant Physiology
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 3/16/2001
Publication Date: 3/30/2001
Citation: OKAGAKI, R.J., KYNAST, R.G., LIVINGSTON, S.M., RUSSELL, C.D., RINES, H.W., PHILLIPS, R.L. MAPPING MAIZE SEQUENCES TO CHROMOSOMES USING OAT-MAIZE CHROMOSOME ADDITION MATERIALS. PLANT PHYSIOLOGY. 2001. V. 125. P. 1228-1235.

Interpretive Summary: An understanding of the functions of the thousands of genes comprising the genome (the complete set of genes) in corn and how to manipulate them most effectively in breeding to make an improved corn plant requires a knowledge of where each gene is located along the DNA sequence or genetic material of the corn plant. The genetic material of plants and animals comes distributed in packages termed chromosomes. The basic number of chromosome varies with species; corn has ten. The genome of corn is quite complex with most genes being present in two or even more copies. Because the multiple but highly similar copies of a gene are often located on different chromosomes, the ability to assign each copy to a chromosome enables the corn researcher to determine which gene copy is the one they have isolated for analysis. Recently we described unique genetic materials recovered from sexual crosses between the cereals oat and corn, namely novel oat plants each with a single corn chromosome added to their genomes. Using a complet set of such oat-corn chromosome additions, one for each of the ten corn chromosomes, we now show that they can be used to assign the location of individual corn genes to their respective chromosomes. This technique along with the set of oat-corn chromosome addition lines represent valuable tools for the many scientists working in the field of corn genomics and corn improvement.

Technical Abstract: Oat-maize chromosome additions are produced by crossing maize (Zea mays L.) and oat (Avena sativa L.). During early embryo development maize chromosomes are preferentially eliminated, and oat plants are often recovered that retain a single maize chromosome. Each of the 10 maize chromosomes recently has been isolated as a separate oat-maize addition. We edescribe here the mapping of 400 maize sequences to chromosomes using PCR and DNA from the oat-maize addition material. Fifty of the sequences were from cloned markers that had been previously mapped by linkage analysis, and our results were consistent with those obtained using Southern blot analysis. Three hundred and fifty previously unmapped expressed sequence tags (EST) and sequence tagged sites (STS) were mapped to chromosomes. Maize gene sequences and expression data are rapidly being accumulated. Coupling this information with positional information from high throughput mapping programs provides plant biologists powerful tools for identifying candidate genes of interest.