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JXB Advance Access originally published online on August 14, 2009
Journal of Experimental Botany 2009 60(14):4151-4157; doi:10.1093/jxb/erp249
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© 2009 The Author(s).
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.5/uk/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. This paper is available online free of all access charges (see http://jxb.oxfordjournals.org/open_access.html for further details)

RESEARCH PAPER

Identification of genes related to germination in aged maize seed by screening natural variability

P. Revilla *{dagger}, A. Butrón *, V. M. Rodríguez, R. A. Malvar and A. Ordás

Misión Biológica de Galicia (CSIC), Apartado 28, 36080 Pontevedra, Spain

{dagger} To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: previlla{at}mbg.cesga.es

Ageing reduces vigour and viability in maize inbred lines due to non-heritable degenerative changes. Besides non-heritable genetic changes due to chromosome aberrations and damage in the DNA sequence, heritable changes during maize conservation have been reported. Genetic variability among aged seeds of inbred lines could be used for association studies with seed germination. The objective of this study was to identify genes related to germination in aged seeds. The sweet corn inbred line P39 and the field corn inbred line EP44 were used as plant material. Bulks of living and dead seeds after 20 and 22 years of storage were compared by using simple sequence repeats (SSRs) and, when the bulks differed for a marker, the individual grains were genotyped. Differences between dead and living seeds could be explained by residual variability, spontaneous mutation, or ageing. Variability was larger for chromosome 7 than for other chromosomes, and for distal than for proximal markers, suggesting some relationships between position in the genome and viability in aged seed. Polymorphic SSRs between living and dead seeds were found in six known genes, including pathogenesis-related protein 2, superoxide dismutase 4, catalase 3, opaque endosperm 2, and metallothionein1 that were related to germination, along with golden plant 2. In addition, five novel candidate genes have been identified; three of them could be involved in resistance to diseases, one in detoxification of electrophillic compounds, and another in transcription regulation. Therefore, genetic variability among aged seeds of inbreds was useful for preliminary association analysis to identify candidate genes.

Key words: Ageing, genetic variability, germination, Zea mays

* These authors contributed equally to this work.

Received 27 February 2009; Revised 14 May 2009 Accepted 29 July 2009


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