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

杂种优势是杂交种相对于其(近交系)亲本的平均表现更好的表现。尽管它对植物育种具有重要意义，但人们对杂种优势的分子基础知之甚少。基因组学，特别是表达谱分析，为在分子水平上研究这一现象提供了新的可能性。在本研究中，由于株高与整个玉米植株的重要农艺性状干物质产量密切相关，因此将以株高作为研究杂种优势的模型。7个株高在50%以上具有显著杂种优势的杂交自交系三胞胎将在形态和组织水平上进行分析，并通过表达谱分析。可公开获得的“Unigene微阵列”将用于新梢发育的几个生长阶段的表达谱分析。结果将进行生物信息学分析，以确定杂种及其亲本自交系之间的差异表达基因，这些基因与杂种优势有关，并可能成为植物育种中更有针对性地利用杂种优势的诊断工具的基础。

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.