A prior study (13) from this laboratory showed that oxidation of exogenously applied indole-3-acetic acid (IAA) to oxindole-3-acetic acid (OxIAA) is the major catabolic pathway for IAA in Zea mays endosperm. In this work, we demonstrate that OxIAA is a naturally occurring compound in shoot and endosperm tissue of Z. mays and that the amount of OxIAA in both shoot and endosperm tissue is approxi...

The infl uence of cadmium (Cd) on physiological processes in wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) and maize (Zea mays L.) plants exposed to either optimal mineral nutrition or the absence of magnesium (Mg) as well as the accumulation of cadmium and magnesium in plant organs were studied using the method of water culture in a greenhouse. Cd treatment reduced shoot fresh mass more strongly in Mg-supplied...

Nineteen accessions selected from the four species and three subspecies of the genus Zea and one accession from the related genus Tripsacum were surveyed for variation with 21 restriction endonucleases. In all, 580 restriction sites were assayed in each chloroplast (cp)DNA, this representing 2.2% of the genome. Twenty-four of the 580 sites were variable in one or more of the cpDNAs. The number ...

The teosintes, the closest wild relatives of maize, are important resources for the study of maize genetics and evolution and for plant breeding. We genotyped 237 individual teosinte plants for 93 microsatellites. Phylogenetic relationships among species and subspecific taxa were largely consistent with prior analyses for other types of molecular markers. Plants of all species formed monophylet...

The performance of every plant in an environment is an indicator of how the plant can withstand the various environmental conditions. This study investigated the toxicity of crude oil on the growth performance, chlorophyll contents, enzymatic activities and oxidative stress biomarkers of eight accessions of Zea mays. The growth enzyme (amylase and invertase) activities, as well as oxidative s...

Pharmaceutically active compounds (PACs) are continuously dispersed into the environment due to human and veterinary use, giving rise to their potential accumulation in edible plants. In this study, Eruca sativa L. and Zea mays L. were selected to determine the potential uptake and accumulation of eight different PACs (Salbutamol, Atenolol, Lincomycin, Cyclophosphamide, Carbamazepine, Bezafibra...

Red light-induced changes in the gravitropism of roots of Zea mays variety Merit is a very low fluence response with a threshold of 10(-9) moles per square meter and is not reversible by far red light. Blue light also affects root gravitropism but the sensitivity of roots to blue is 50 to 100 times less than to an equal fluence of red. In Z. mays Merit we conclude that phytochrome is the sole...

Six inbred lines of Zea mays expressing different soluble (cytosolic) malate dehydrogenase (sMDH) zymogram phenotypes were analyzed genetically. sMDH was found to be coded for by unlinked duplicated loci in four of these inbred lines. The remaining two lines were found not to possess these duplicated loci. Furthermore, the duplicated loci, sMdh1 and sMdh2, have been found to be located on diffe...

To facilitate the exploration of publicly available Zea mays expression data, we constructed a maize expression compendium, making use of an integration methodology and a consistent probe to gene mapping based on the 5b.60 sequence release of Z. mays. The compendium is made available through a web portal MAGIC that hosts a variety of analysis tools to easily browse and analyze the data. Our com...

Acetylcholine (ACh) is a chemical transmitter serving to propagate an electrical perturbation across the synaptic junctions of animals. ACh and AChE have previously been demonstrated to occur in plants. In this work, we detected AChE at the interface between stele and cortex of the mesocotyl of Zea mays by measuring hydrolysis of acetylthiocholine and by liberation of labeled acetate from [1-(1...