Naturally occurring polyamines in plants have been implicated in cell division, metabolic activity, floral initiation, and fruit development. The plant growth regulator BM was formulated to stimulate seed production and fruit growth. In this study, it was hypothesized that the addition of BM would increase levels of polyamines for seed induction and have a direct benefit of improving fertilizat...

Seed endosperm development in Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) is under control of the polycomb group complex, which includes Fertilization Independent Endosperm (FIE). The polycomb group complex regulates downstream factors, e.g. Pheres1 (PHE1), by genomic imprinting. In heterozygous fie mutants, an endosperm develops in ovules carrying a maternal fie allele without fertilization, finally le...

Seed endosperm development in Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) is under control of the polycomb group complex, which includes Fertilization Independent Endosperm (FIE). The polycomb group complex regulates downstream factors, e.g. Pheres1 (PHE1), by genomic imprinting. In heterozygous fie mutants, an endosperm develops in ovules carrying a maternal fie allele without fertilization, finally le...

Understanding the molecular mechanisms regulating pea seed developmental process is extremely important for pea breeding. In this study, we used high-throughput RNA-Seq and bioinformatics analyses to examine the changes in gene expression during seed development in vegetable pea and grain pea, and compare the gene expression profiles of these two pea types. RNA-Seq generated 18.7 G of raw data,...

BACKGROUND Camelina sativa is an emerging dedicated oilseed crop designed for biofuel and biodiesel applications as well as a source for edible and general-purpose oils. Such valuable oilseed crop is subjected to plant breeding programs and is suggested for large-scale production of better seed and oil quality. To accomplish this objective and to further enhance its oil content, a better unders...

BACKGROUND AND AIMS Using two parental clones of outcrossing Trifolium ambiguum as a potential model system, we examined how during seed development the maternal parent, number of seeds per pod, seed position within the pod, and pod position within the inflorescence influenced individual seed fresh weight, dry weight, water content, germinability, desiccation tolerance, hardseededness, and subs...

To characterize the SHL2 and SHL1 genes in detail, we analyzed three strains carrying weak alleles of SHL2, shl2-6, shl2-7, and shl2-8, and one weak allele of SHL1, shl1-3. In contrast to strong alleles, which result in lack of shoot meristem, strains bearing these weak alleles formed shoot meristem frequently during embryogenesis. In shl2-6 and shl2-7 mutants, the meristem was lost during seed...

Arabidopsis LEAFY COTYLEDON1 (LEC1) is a critical regulator required for normal development during the early and late phases of embryogenesis that is sufficient to induce embryonic development in vegetative cells. LEC1 encodes a HAP3 subunit of the CCAAT binding transcription factor. We show that the 10 Arabidopsis HAP3 (AHAP3) subunits can be divided into two classes based on sequence identity...