セミナー情報

Embryonic development in rice is initiated and promoted by synergistic actions of paternal-genome-expressed transcription factors in the fertilized egg cell. Part of this mechanism is delivery of the transcription factor BABYBOOM from sperm to egg, in rice, maize and other cereals. Ectopic expression of BABYBOOM in the egg induces parthenogenesis and combination of this with the 2n clonal gametes resulting from apomeiosis (MiMe) leads to clonal plants. Improvements to the induction of parthenogenesis can be achieved by optimizing delivery of BABYBOOM, and extension of the method to maize will require apomeiosis. I will discuss our recent results that suggest synthetic apomixis will be a useful strategy for hybrid crop plants in the future.