Erik Vollbrecht's temporary lab website at Iowa State University.
While the Vollbrecht lab's website is under construction, please
visit one of our related pages hosted at
... the MORPH RCN web
server or
... the Genetics,
Development and Cell Biology departmental web site.
For information related to our research in maize functional genomics, please visit this link to our page at PantGDB.
For information about our research in molecular genetics of plant development and evolution,
you may wish to read our recent publication.
Figure 1 of
that paper is reproduced below.
Figure 1. The ramosa1 gene regulates meristem function and branching architecture in maize:
Normal and mutant ra1-R maize inflorescences. a and d, Normal, few-branched tassel and unbranched ear. b and e, Mutant, highly branched ra1-R tassel and ear. c and f, Due to somatic mutability of the ra1-m2 allele, the main axes of mutant ra1-m2 tassel and ear are a mosaic of adjoining normal (unbranched) and mutant (long-branched) tissue. Only the mutant (branched) ear sector (red box) contains kernels with purple spots that report the presence of active Spm transposons, while the normal portion bears non-spotted kernels reflecting lack of somatic Spm transposon activity. g - k, Scanning electron micrographs (SEMs) of inflorescence development in standard inbred B73. Most second order (second-order) meristems in the tassel (h, red arrowheads) and all second-orders in the ear (j) produce short, compact branches. l - p, SEMs of developing ra1-R inflorescences. second-order meristems in the upper tassel (m, green arrowheads) and the ear (o) grow out directly to produce the extra long branches in ra1-R mutants. Thus, the normal function of the ra1 gene is to make second-order meristems determinate. Bar = 250 µM.