Genes & Genetic Systems
Online ISSN : 1880-5779
Print ISSN : 1341-7568
ISSN-L : 1341-7568
88 巻, 5 号
選択された号の論文の6件中1~6を表示しています
GGS Prize
Review
  • Jungwoo Eo, Heui-Soo Kim
    原稿種別: Review
    2013 年 88 巻 5 号 p. 273-278
    発行日: 2013/10/01
    公開日: 2014/04/03
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    Genetic variations of functional genes in various animal species have been previously examined to understand the relationship between genotypes and phenotypes. Repeat polymorphism can be found in not only coding sequences but also untranslated regions of the protein-coding genes, affecting gene regulation via a variety of mechanisms. In this respect, repeat polymorphisms including microsatellites, variable number of tandem repeats (VNTRs), and short interspersed nuclear elements (SINEs) in relation to functional genes contribute to recognition of genetic or phenotypic variation and individual identification. These elements are biologically valuable markers for studies on association between genetic make-up and behavioral patterns in dog breeds. Hence, to examine the effect of genotype on behavior, studies on this combination are certainly important. Hence, this review could cast light on the functional roles of repeat polymorphisms in dog behavior and breed variation.
Full papers
  • Keisuke Sudo, Jong-In Park, Satomi Sakazono, Hiromi Masuko-Suzuki, Mas ...
    原稿種別: Full paper
    2013 年 88 巻 5 号 p. 279-287
    発行日: 2013/10/01
    公開日: 2014/04/03
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    電子付録
    In plant reproduction, pollination is the initial key process in bringing together the male and female gametophytes. When a pollen grain lands on the surface of the stigma, information is exchanged between the pollen and stigmatic cell to determine whether the pollen grain will be accepted or rejected. If it is accepted, the stigmatic papilla cell supplies water and other resources to the pollen for germination and pollen tube elongation. Cellular processes involving actin are essential for pollen germination and tube growth, and actin-binding proteins regulate these processes by interacting with actin filaments to assemble cytoskeletal structures and actin networks. LIM proteins, which belong to a subfamily of cysteine-rich proteins, are a family of actin-binding proteins in plants, and are considered to be important for formation of the actin cytoskeleton and maintenance of its dynamics. Although the physiological and biochemical characteristics of LIMs have been elucidated in vitro in a variety of cell types, their exact role in pollen germination and pollen tube growth during pollination remained unclear. In this manuscript, we focus on the pollen-specific LIM proteins, AtPLIM2a and AtPLIM2c, and define their biological function during pollination in Arabidopsis thaliana. The atplim2a/atplim2c double knockdown RNAi plants showed a reduced pollen germination, approximately one-fifth of wild type, and slower pollen tube growth in the pistil, that is 80.4 μm/hr compared to 140.8 μm/hr in wild type. These defects led to an occasional unfertilized ovule at the bottom of the silique in RNAi plants. Our data provide direct evidence of the biological function of LIM proteins during pollination as actin-binding proteins, modulating cytoskeletal structures and actin networks, and their consequent importance in seed production.
  • Kotoha Isobe, Aya Takahashi, Koichiro Tamura
    原稿種別: Full paper
    2013 年 88 巻 5 号 p. 289-300
    発行日: 2013/10/01
    公開日: 2014/04/03
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    電子付録
    Cold acclimation is one of the important factors in temperature adaptation for insects needing to make rapid adjustment to the seasonal temperature changes in their living environment. In a fruit fly species, Drosophila albomicans, which has a tropical origin and currently has a wide geographic distribution extended into Asian temperate regions, cold tolerance in terms of survival time at 1℃ of adult flies reared at 25℃ was substantially improved by a cold acclimation at 20℃ for several days. Examining 29 isofemale lines from widely distributed natural populations, we observed a substantial variation in their acclimation response. However, the acclimation response was not necessarily stronger in the strains from the recently colonized temperate regions. A significantly stronger acclimation response was detected in male flies of the temperate strains when compared to those of the tropical strains. D. albomicans also showed stronger cold tolerance compared to its closely related species belonging to the D. nasuta subgroup. Among these strains, we detected a strong positive correlation between the cold tolerance change and the metabolic rate change upon the cold acclimation, suggesting their strong physiological association regulated by common genetic factors, which may have been the target of natural selection for the temperature adaptation. The response to deacclimation and reacclimation suggested that a systematic change in gene expressions is the main molecular mechanism for the cold acclimation to have effects on the cold tolerance and metabolic rate changes.
  • Ghasem Mahdevar, Abbas Nowzari-Dalini, Mehdi Sadeghi
    原稿種別: Full paper
    2013 年 88 巻 5 号 p. 301-309
    発行日: 2013/10/01
    公開日: 2014/04/03
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    Gene expression is a highly regulated biological process that is fundamental to the existence of phenotypes of any living organism. The regulatory relations are usually modeled as a network; simply, every gene is modeled as a node and relations are shown as edges between two related genes. This paper presents a novel method for inferring correlation networks, networks constructed by connecting co-expressed genes, through predicting co-expression level from genes promoter’s sequences. According to the results, this method works well on biological data and its outcome is comparable to the methods that use microarray as input. The method is written in C++ language and is available upon request from the corresponding author.
Short communication
  • Giri P. Joshi, Jianjian Li, Shuhei Nasuda, Takashi R. Endo
    原稿種別: Short communication
    2013 年 88 巻 5 号 p. 311-314
    発行日: 2013/10/01
    公開日: 2014/04/03
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    The ditelosomic line for the long arm of chromosome 4B (4BL) of Chinese Spring (CS) wheat is not available because it is completely male sterile. Since all deletions in the 4B short arm (4BS) cause male sterility in the homozygous condition, a male-fertility gene should be located in a distal region of 4BS. Among the selfed progeny of a hybrid between a male-sterile 4BS deletion plant (4BS-8) and a Japanese common wheat cultivar Norin 61 (N61), we obtained self-fertile 4BS-8 homozygous deletion plants. We also found fertile nullisomic-4B plants among the selfed progeny of a hybrid between a monosomic line 4B of N61 and CS. This fact suggested that N61 has a novel male-fertility gene on a chromosome other than 4B. We established a self-fertile ditelosomic 4BL line after backcrossing a fertile 4BS-8 plant to CS monotelodisomic 4BL. By cytological observation and PCR analysis using 16 SSR markers, we verified that this ditelosomic line lacked the entire 4BS arm and found that three of the markers were on 4BS. We conducted deletion mapping using three 4BS homozygous deletion lines and three 4BS-specific markers.
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