Seed germination strategies vary dramatically among species but relatively little is known about how germination traits correlate with other elements of plant strategy systems. Understanding drivers of germination strategy is critical to our understanding of the evolutionary biology of plant reproduction.We present a novel assessment of seed germination strategies focussing on Australian alpine...

Sucrose (a disaccharide made of glucose and fructose) is the primary carbon source transported to sink organs in many plants. Since fructose accounts for half of the hexoses used for metabolism in sink tissues, plant fructokinases (FRKs), the main fructose-phosphorylating enzymes, are likely to play a central role in plant development. However, to date, their specific functions have been the su...

Drought is one of the most severe environmental stress factors limiting crop yield especially when occurring during anthesis and seed filling. This terminal drought is characterized by an excess production of the phytohormone abscisic acid (ABA) which plays an important role during seed development and dormancy. All the genes putatively involved in ABA biosynthesis and inactivation in barley we...

DNA methylation is an epigenetic mark associated with transposable element silencing and gene imprinting in flowering plants and mammals. In plants, imprinting occurs in the endosperm, which nourishes the embryo during seed development. We have profiled Arabidopsis DNA methylation genome-wide in the embryo and endosperm and found that large-scale methylation changes accompany endosperm developm...

Upstream sequences of the gene encoding the a‘ subunit of 8-conglycinin were analyzed for interactions with nuclear proteins from immature soybean seeds. Two factors were identified that interact with specific sequence elements within 257 base pairs 5‘ of the transcription start site. One factor, SEF 3, binds exclusively to a region composed of two elements located at -183 to -169 base pairs an...

Normal plant development requires epigenetic regulation to enforce changes in developmental fate. Genomic imprinting is a type of epigenetic regulation in which identical alleles of genes are expressed in a parent-of-origin dependent manner. Deep sequencing of transcriptomes has identified hundreds of imprinted genes with scarce evidence for the developmental importance of individual imprinted ...

Abiotic stress is one of the severe stresses of environment that lowers the growth and yield of any crop even on irrigated land throughout the world. A major phytohormone abscisic acid (ABA) plays an essential part in acting toward varied range of stresses like heavy metal stress, drought, thermal or heat stress, high level of salinity, low temperature, and radiation stress. Its role is also el...

Polycomb group (PcG) proteins act as evolutionary conserved epigenetic mediators of cell identity because they repress transcriptional programs that are not required at particular developmental stages. Each tissue is likely to have a specific epigenetic profile, which acts as a blueprint for its developmental fate. A hallmark for Polycomb Repressive Complex 2 (PRC2) activity is trimethylated ly...

The major seed storage protein of rice (Oryza sativa L.), glutelin, is encoded by a smal1 multigene family of about 10 copies per haploid genome. Eight genes have a)ready been sequenced at both the cDNA and genomic DNA levels (Takaiwa et al. 1987a, b, 1989, 1991a, c, Okita et al, 1989), All the glutelin genes are specifically expressed in the maturing seed (Okita et al. 1989, Takaiwa et al. 199...