Poster: Late and Moved Abstracts

Abs # 981: Molecular and Genetic Characterization of the REM gene family in Arabidopsis

Presenter:	Swaminathan, Kankshita , kankshita@dartmouth.edu
Authors	Swaminathan, Kankshita  (A)   Clark, Lindsay V. (A)   Jack, Tom P. (A)
Affiliations:	(A): Dartmouth College

To identify novel genes potentially involved in the inflorescence and early flower development, we generated and characterized the expression patterns of more than 11,000 enhancer trap lines in Arabidopsis. Our goal was to identify genes that were expressed in the shoot apical meristem and early stages of flower development with the hope that these genes would be playing a functional role in growth and/or development of flowers and shoots. In the course of studying an enhancer trap line that exhibited expression in the inflorescence meristems and floral primordial we discovered a moderately sized, plant-specific gene family in Arabidopsis. Here, we describe the molecular characterization of this gene family in Arabidopsis. Due to the meristem expression patterns of many of the genes in this family and their sequence similarity to the reproductive meristem specific Brassica oleracea gene BoREM1, the family was named the reproductive meristem (REM) gene family. Representatives of this family are also found in rice, tomato and pine. In Arabidopsis, there are 43 members of this gene family. The REM genes distantly related to several classes of known plant DNA binding proteins, including the B3 class of proteins such as VP1 from maize and ABI3 from Arabidopsis, the auxin response factors, and the RAV proteins. So far the function of only one REM gene has been determined (VERNILIZATION1/REM39). One unusual feature is that some of the REM genes are clustered in the genome; REM1-REM9 are clustered on chromosome 4, REM10-REM14 are clustered on chromosome 2 and REM40-REM42 are clustered on chromosome 5. The remaining REM genes are not clustered and are present on all five Arabidopsis chromosomes. We present our progress on the molecular and genetic analysis of this gene family.