Transcriptional profiling of pearl millet egg cells undergoing parthenogenesis

PODIO, MARICEL; CONNER, JOANN A.; OZIAS-AKINS, PEGGY

Conferencia; CROPS Conference. Hudson Alpha Institute for Biotechnology; 2017

Apomixis is an asexual plant reproductive system that results in clonal seeds from the maternal plant. It is an advantageous trait in agriculture because it guarantees propagation of hybrid seeds and maintenance of hybrid vigor. Apomixis has been described in more than 400 angiosperm species including several in the genera Pennisetum/Cenchrus. In these species, an ASGR-BabyBooM-Like (ASGR-BBML) gene, encoding an AP2-domain transcription factor, has been discovered to promote parthenogenesis (one of the components of apomixis required to produce an embryo without fertilization) when expressed as a transgene in sexual pearl millet, rice, and maize. To understand pathways affected by ASGR-BBML, a RNA-seq analysis from ASGR-BBML transgene-positive and -negative egg-cells was performed after egg cell isolation using Laser Capture Microscopy (LCM). In this present work, we show gene expression analysis and biological processes associated with parthenogenesis.