Document Type
Article
Date of Original Version
2016
Department
Cell & Molecular Biology
Abstract
Sex determination in maize involves the production of staminate and pistillate florets from an initially bisexual floral meristem. Pistil elimination in staminate florets requires jasmonic acid signaling, and functional pistils are protected by the action of the silkless 1 (sk1) gene. The sk1 gene was identified and found to encode a previously uncharacterized family 1 uridine diphosphate glycosyltransferase that localized to the plant peroxisomes. Constitutive expression of an sk1 transgene protected all pistils in the plant, causing complete feminization, a gain-of-function phenotype that operates by blocking the accumulation of jasmonates. The segregation of an sk1 transgene was used to effectively control the production of pistillate and staminate inflorescences in maize plants.
Citation/Publisher Attribution
A. P. Hayward, M. A. Moreno, T. P. Howard III, J. Hague, K. Nelson, C. Heffelfinger, S. Romero, A. P. Kausch, G. Glauser, I. F. Acosta, J. P. Mottinger, S. L. Dellaporta, Control of sexuality by the sk1-encoded UDP-glycosyltransferase of maize. Sci. Adv. 2, e1600991 (2016).
Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.1600991
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License