THE ROLE OF A NOVEL MADS BOX PROTEIN DURING FLOWER DEVELOPMENT

GIGENA VIRGINIA;; REINHEIMER RENATA

Congreso; LIV Reunión anual de la sociedad Argentina de Investigaciones en Bioquímica y Biología Molecular; 2018

Grasses differ from the angiosperm family because of their modified flowers. Grass flowers lack of the conventional sepals and petals, having instead two bract-like organs called lemma and palea. The homology of the lemma and palea is yet a theme of discussion. To begin to understand the identity of these novel organs we study the molecular evolution and perform the functional characterization of genes which codes for MIKC type MADS BOX transcription factors. These proteins are characterized by having a MADS BOX domain with binding-DNA function; an I domain that allows the selective formation of DNA-binding dimmers; a K domain that, due to its hydrophobic residues, is implicated in protein dimerization and a C-terminous domain less preserved among the different proteins, which is involved in transcriptional activation or the formation of transcription factor complexes. In this work we characterized the overexpression of MADS BOX candidate genes on the model species Arabidopsis. For that, genes were amplified and cloned in vector construction for gene overexpression. The Col-0 plants were transformed. The phenotype was characterized exhaustively, analyzing the whole plant with special emphasis in the flower development.