Skip to main content
ARS Home » Midwest Area » St. Paul, Minnesota » Plant Science Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #76015
Title: SEARCH FOR THE GENE(S) CONTROLLING FERULIC ACID CROSS-LINKING OF LIGNIN AND POLYSACCHARIDES IN MAIZE CELL WALLS

Author
item Ni, Weiting
item PHILLIPS, RONALD - UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA
item Jung, Hans Joachim

Submitted to: Keystone Symposia on Molecular and Cellular Biology
Publication Type: Abstract Only
Publication Acceptance Date: 4/1/1997
Publication Date: N/A
Citation: N/A

Interpretive Summary:

Technical Abstract: A major factor that limits digestion of grass cell wall polysaccharides is cross linking of lignin to polysaccharides by ferulic acid. Genetic manipulation of cross linking is desired to improve forage digestibility. Transposon tagged maize system was used to identify and clone the gene(s) responsible for ferulate ester synthesis. The mum-9 mutator line was crossed with four maize inbreds in 1994. During the 1995 growing season 12,000 seedlings from selfed progeny of the transposon tagged lines were analyzed for leaf ferulate ester concentration. Plants exhibiting low ferulate concentrations were reevaluated at maturity. Selfed progeny of plants that had low ferulate ester levels at both evaluations were analyzed again to verify the inheritance of the reduced ferulate ester trait. Three plants passed all the evaluations. One of the three mutants also exhibited an unusually low syringyl proportion in its lignin. To our surprise no plants completely lacking ferulate esters were found. In fact, ferulate ester concentrations in cell walls were maintained at fairly constant levels compared with the variation observed for p-coumaric acid, a related compound. Inverse PCR cloning of the tagged genes has yielded several small DNA fragments unique to individual mutants. However, larger fragments were not amplified due to large number of mu elements in the genome and limitations of PCR technique.