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Genetic Regulation of Meiosis in Plants
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Genetic Regulation of Meiosis in Plants

A special issue of Genes (ISSN 2073-4425). This special issue belongs to the section "Plant Genetics and Genomics".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (16 July 2021) | Viewed by 7121

Special Issue Editor

Prof. Dr. Nico De Storme

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Division of Crop Biotechnics, Biosystems Department, KU Leuven, 3000 Leuven, Belgium
Interests: plant sexual reproduction; crop breeding; plant genetics and genomics
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Meiosis is a highly specialized cell division that is central to plant sexual reproduction, as it halves the chromosome number and creates novel genetic variability with major relevance for plant evolution and crop breeding. Like in other eukaryotes, meiosis in plants follows a modified cell division program that integrates tight regulation of chromosome dynamics within a customized cell cycle framework to achieve reductional cell division and haploid spore formation.

In parallel, meiosis has adopted specialized DNA break repair processes in prophase I to enable formation of physical cross-over (CO) events that mediate reciprocal exchange of genomic information between homologous chromosomes to hence create novel allelic variation in the progeny. With plants exhibiting various levels of genome and ploidy complexity, meiosis has often evolved a broad range of adaptive mechanisms to guarantee reproductive success and transgenerational ploidy stability.

The tight regulation of plant meiosis and all of its subprocesses, as well as its adaptive response to intrinsic and external influences, i.e., including CO plasticity and meiotic restitution, indicates the involvement of various regulatory and structural processes that are under (epi-)genetic control. The identification and characterization of underlying genetic factors and epigenetic elements forms the initial step in enhancing our understanding of the mechanistic control of this specialized cell division, and additionally provides a basic knowledge platform that is relevant for plant genome evolution and applied crop breeding.

This research topic aims to provide the latest findings on the genetic and epigenetic regulation of plant meiosis, including new insights in meiotic recombination, chromosome dynamics, and cell division, as well as its involvement in adaptive plant evolution and crop breeding. We welcome original research manuscripts and reviews in model systems, nonconventional plant species, and crops that provide novel insights into the (epi-)genetic determination of meiosis or one of its subprocesses, such as initiation of meiosis, homolog pairing, recombination, CO patterning, chromosome segregation, cell cycle regulation, cytokinesis, etc.

In parallel, in this Special Issue we also accept descriptive studies on the genetic variation of meiotic determinants as well as on their functional role in reproductive development, genetic variation, and adaptive genome evolution.

Prof. Nico De Storme
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Genes is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • Meiotic cell division
  • Homologous pairing and synapsis
  • DSB formation, processing, and repair
  • CO designation and biogenesis
  • Chromosome segregation in MI and MII
  • Chromatin dynamics

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Published Papers (2 papers)

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20 pages, 1863 KiB  
Article
Effective RNAi-Mediated Silencing of the Mismatch Repair MSH2 Gene Induces Sterility of Tomato Plants but Not an Increase in Meiotic Recombination
by Svetlana R. Strelnikova, Anastasiya A. Krinitsina and Roman A. Komakhin
Genes 2021, 12(8), 1167; https://doi.org/10.3390/genes12081167 - 29 Jul 2021
Cited by 5 | Viewed by 2663
Abstract
In plant breeding, the ability to manipulate meiotic recombination aids in the efficient construction of new allelic compositions of chromosomes and facilitates gene transfer from wild relatives of crop plants. The DNA mismatch repair system antagonizes meiotic recombination. In this research, a trial [...] Read more.
In plant breeding, the ability to manipulate meiotic recombination aids in the efficient construction of new allelic compositions of chromosomes and facilitates gene transfer from wild relatives of crop plants. The DNA mismatch repair system antagonizes meiotic recombination. In this research, a trial was conducted to evaluate transgenic tomato plants carrying an RNA interference (RNAi) construct designed to inhibit the expression of the mismatch repair MSH2 gene. To drive the RNAi construct, we used either a pro-SmAMP2 promoter from Stellaria media ANTIMICROBIAL PEPTIDE2 or a Cauliflower mosaic virus 35S promoter (CaMV35S). The results of real-time PCR showed that, with a 16 h light/8 h dark photoperiod, MSH2-RNAi tomato transgenic plants exhibited MSH2 gene transcript contents ranging from 0% to 3% in the leaves, relative to untransformed controls. However, with this lighting mode, the MSH2-RNAi transgenic plants grew slowly, flowered poorly, and did not form seed sets. During cultivation with a 12 h light/12 h dark photoperiod, MSH2-RNAi transgenic plants exhibited MSH2 gene transcript contents ranging from 3% to 42%, relative to untransformed controls. Under these conditions, F1 hybrid seed sets formed for most of the MSH2-RNAi transgenic plants with the RNAi construct driven by the CaMV35S promoter, and for one transformant with the RNAi construct driven by the pro-SmAMP2 promoter. Under conditions of a 12 h light/12 h dark photoperiod, most of the F1 transgenic hybrids showed MSH2 gene transcript contents ranging from 3% to 34% and formed F2 offspring sets, which made it possible to assess the meiotic recombination frequency. We showed that the effective inhibition of MSH2 in MSH2-RNAi tomato transgenic plants is not associated with an increase in meiotic recombination compared to the control, but it stimulates the sterility of plants. It was established that the expression of the MSH2 gene in tomato plants is about 50 times higher with a 12 h light/12 h dark than with a 16 h light/8 h dark photoperiod. It is discussed that, in Solanum lycopersicum tomato plants, which are not sensitive to the day length for flowering, changing the lighting time may be a means of controlling the meiotic recombination frequency within certain limits. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Genetic Regulation of Meiosis in Plants)
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14 pages, 12460 KiB  
Article
A Hypomorphic Mutant of PHD Domain Protein Male Meiocytes Death 1
by Bing Liu, Chunlian Jin, Nico De Storme, Sébastien Schotte, Cédric Schindfessel, Tim De Meyer and Danny Geelen
Genes 2021, 12(4), 516; https://doi.org/10.3390/genes12040516 - 1 Apr 2021
Cited by 6 | Viewed by 3462
Abstract
Meiosis drives reciprocal genetic exchanges and produces gametes with halved chromosome number, which is important for the genetic diversity, plant viability, and ploidy consistency of flowering plants. Alterations in chromosome dynamics and/or cytokinesis during meiosis may lead to meiotic restitution and the formation [...] Read more.
Meiosis drives reciprocal genetic exchanges and produces gametes with halved chromosome number, which is important for the genetic diversity, plant viability, and ploidy consistency of flowering plants. Alterations in chromosome dynamics and/or cytokinesis during meiosis may lead to meiotic restitution and the formation of unreduced microspores. In this study, we isolated an Arabidopsis mutant male meiotic restitution 1 (mmr1), which produces a small subpopulation of diploid or polyploid pollen grains. Cytological analysis revealed that mmr1 produces dyads, triads, and monads indicative of male meiotic restitution. Both homologous chromosomes and sister chromatids in mmr1 are separated normally, but chromosome condensation at metaphase I is slightly affected. The mmr1 mutant displayed incomplete meiotic cytokinesis. Supportively, immunostaining of the microtubular cytoskeleton showed that the spindle organization at anaphase II and mini-phragmoplast formation at telophase II are aberrant. The causative mutation in mmr1 was mapped to chromosome 1 at the chromatin regulator Male Meiocyte Death 1 (MMD1/DUET) locus. mmr1 contains a C-to-T transition at the third exon of MMD1/DUET at the genomic position 2168 bp from the start codon, which causes an amino acid change G618D that locates in the conserved PHD-finger domain of histone binding proteins. The F1 progenies of mmr1 crossing with knockout mmd1/duet mutant exhibited same meiotic defects and similar meiotic restitution rate as mmr1. Taken together, we here report a hypomorphic mmd1/duet allele that typically shows defects in microtubule organization and cytokinesis. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Genetic Regulation of Meiosis in Plants)
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