Plant non-specific lipid transfer proteins (nsLtps) have been reported to be involved in plant defense activity against bacterial and fungal pathogens. In this study, we identified 135 (122 putative and 13 previously identified) Solanaceae nsLtps, which are clustered into 8 different groups. By comparing with Boutrot's nsLtp classification, we classified these eight groups into five types (I, I...

In this study, we describe a property of Gramineae genes, and perhaps all monocot genes, that is not observed in eudicot genes. Along the direction of transcription, beginning at the junction of the 5'-UTR and the coding region, there are gradients in GC content, codon usage, and amino-acid usage. The magnitudes of these gradients are large enough to hinder the annotation of the rice genome and...

The Gramineae have been a pioneer group among non-woody plants to be modelled with the approach of functional-structural plant modelling (FSPM). During the past decade, models have focussed on morphological aspects of plant development. They now provide crop scientists with general guidelines for building new cereal models. We present some of them here, considering the different aspects of cere...

An average of 14(7-34) plants each for 61 different collections of Zea (maize and its wild relatives, the teosintes) were studied for 12 enzyme systems coded for by 21 loci. Principal component and cluster analyses based on allele frequencies showed Zea can be divided into two major groups: 1) sect. Luxuriantes, including Z. perennis, Z. diploperennis, and Z. luxurians; and 2) sect. Zea (in par...