Functional analysis of genes involved in heterosis for plant height in maize by expressing profiling

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Heterosis is the superior performance of hybrids compared to the mean of their (inbred) parents. Despite of its significance for plant breeding little is known about the molecular basis of heterosis. Genomics, especially expression profiling, offers new possibilities to study this phenomenon at the molecular level. In this study, the plant height of maize will be used as model to study heterosis, since plant height is closely correlated with the agronomically important trait dry matter yield of whole maize plants. Seven hybrid - inbred triplets with significant heterosis for plant height above 50% will be analysed at the morphological and histological level as well as by expression profiling. Publicly available "unigene microarrays" will be used in expression profiling of several growth stages of shoot development. Results will be bioinformatically analyzed in order to identify differentially expressed genes between hybrids and their parental inbreds, which are involved in heterosis and might form the basis of diagnostic tools for a more targeted exploitation of heterosis in plant breeding.