Maize Transposable Elements: Discovery, Description and Functional Characterization

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PI: Susan R. Wessler (University of Georgia)Co-PIs: Jeffrey L. Bennetzen (University of Georgia), R. Kelly Dawe (University of Georgia), Ning Jiang (Michigan State University), Phillip SanMiguel (Purdue University)Collaborator: Byron Freeman (University of Georgia, Georgia Museum of Natural History)Transposable elements (TEs) are the most abundant component of all characterized genomes of higher eukaryotes and the genome of maize is recognized as having the most dynamic TE component. As such, it is the organism of choice for understanding how TEs contribute to gene and genome evolution. In addition to identifying all TEs in maize, this project will pay particular attention to the characterization of TEs such as Pack-MULEs and Helitrons that routinely capture and amplify gene fragments and thereby confound gene annotation. This project will generate a comprehensive and rigorously annotated TE database that will greatly assist all future maize genome annotations. Computational analysis will serve to identify candidate active TEs whose mobility will be validated using the transposon display technique in conjunction with a wide spectrum of maize genomic DNAs. This project will, for the first time, extend the analysis of TEs to the pericentromere, a region that in other sequenced genomes has been unfinished and/or unannotated. The scientific goals of this project and the familiarity of maize provide outstanding opportunities for student training and for connections between the research community and the broader public. This project dedicates over 10% of its resources to this mission with the centerpiece being the development of web-based and traveling museum exhibits that describe the history of maize as a crop, as a model organism for genome research, and as a key component of many Native American cultures. To this end, collaborations have been established with the University of Georgia Museum of Natural History, the Smithsonian Institution and the U.S. Botanic Garden. Access to Project OutcomesAll information from this project will be made freely available to the Maize Genome Sequencing Project and to long-term repositories such as MaizeGDB (http://www.maizegdb.org/). Software and other tools generated will be freely available at the project website (accessible via http://www.plantbio.uga.edu/wesslerlab/).