“Identification of Genetic Loci Controlling Flowering Time in Plants”

Prof. Harmon is researcher at the USDA Plant Gene Expression Center and is also an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Plant and Microbial Biology in the College of Natural Resources at UC Berkeley.

Flowering is an important developmental decision for cereal crops, as floral structures ultimately yield agronomic products. Plant vegetative and floral developmental trajectory is governed by endogenous signals and environmental cues. An important role of these extrinsic signals is to coordinate flowering development with environmental cues like day length. A gene potentially involved in governing flowering time in maize is GIGANTEA (GI), as this is an established component of pathways that control the photoperiodic flowering response of other plants. However, the role of GI in maize has not been evaluated. The immediate goal of this work is to identify and characterize the structure of four potential transposon insertions in the maize GI (ZmGI) gene. The presence of these mutations is being evaluated with PCR and the precise location of the transposon insertion in each line is being mapped with DNA sequencing. The position of two ZmGI insertions have been successfully confirmed and work continues on verifying the other two mutants. This work is critical to establishing mutant lines for future evaluation of flowering time.

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Juan is a returning student after working for several years after high school. He is currently a student at Skyline College. Since 2005, he has been a full time student and has works part-time as a tutor to foster youth for the San Francisco Independent Living Skills Program. His major area of study is forensics and intends to transfer to UC Berkeley in the fall of 2010.