Seed development in flowering plants is initiated by the fusion of two male gametes with two female gametes--the egg cell and the central cell--which leads to the formation of an embryo and an endosperm, respectively. Fertilization-independent seed formation is actively repressed by the FERTILIZATION-INDEPENDENT SEED (FIS) Polycomb group (PcG) proteins, an evolutionarily conserved class of prot...

Disullide bonds in proteins and in seed meals were reduced with /3-mercaptoethanol to sulfhydryl groups. The generated sulfhydryl groups were then alkylated by treatment with 4-vinylpyridine. The cysteine residues were thus derivatized to S-(4-pyridylethyl)-L-cysteine residues. The cysteine derivative is stable to acid hydrolysis and on amino acid analysis by ion exchange elutes just before arg...

BACKGROUND The oat seed storage proteins are mainly composed of two classes: the globulins and avenins. Among the major cereals, the globulins are the major seed protein class in rice and oats, and along with the higher protein content of oats is the basis for the relative higher nutrition content in oats compared to the other cereals. The second major class of oat seed proteins is the avenins;...

Late-Embryogenesis Abundant (LEA) proteins accumulate to high levels during the last stages of seed development, when desiccation tolerance is acquired, and in vegetative and reproductive tissues under water deficit, leading to the hypothesis that these proteins play a role in the adaptation of plants to this stress condition. In this work, we obtained the accumulation patterns of the Arabidops...

Considering the economic importance of chickpea (C. arietinum L.) seeds, it is important to understand the mechanisms underlying seed development for which a cDNA library was constructed from 6 day old chickpea embryos. A total of 8,186 ESTs were obtained from which 4,048 high quality ESTs were assembled into 1,480 unigenes that majorly encoded genes involved in various metabolic and regulatory...

The mixture of EDTA-soluble proteins found in abalone nacre are known to cause the nucleation and growth of aragonite on calcite seed crystals in supersaturated solutions of calcium carbonate. Past atomic force microscope studies of the interaction of these proteins with calcite crystals did not observe this transition because no information about the crystal polymorph on the surface was obtain...

Flower development, pollination, and fertilization are important stages in the sexual reproduction process of plants; they are also critical steps in the control of seed formation and development. During alfalfa (Medicago sativa L.) seed production, some distinct phenomena such as a low seed setting ratio, serious flower falling, and seed abortion commonly occur. However, the causes of these ph...

Bean bruchids are among the most devastating insect pests of common bean that can inflict huge losses in storage. To identify potential resistance to these pests, screening was performed at Sokoine University Agriculture. Two resistant landraces were identified, viz Kalubungula and KK25. Recombinant inbred (RI) KSy, KSw ML populations created from crosses between Soya × Kalubungula, Sowor...

The regulatory sequences of many genes encoding seed storage proteins have been used to drive seed-specific expression of a variety of proteins in transgenic plants. Because the levels at which these transgene-derived proteins accumulate are generally quite low, we investigated the utility of the arcelin-5 regulatory sequences in obtaining high seed-specific expression in transgenic plants. Arc...

Protein L-isoaspartate (D-aspartate) O-methyltransferases (MTs; EC 2.1.1.77) can initiate the conversion of detrimental L-isoaspartyl residues in spontaneously damaged proteins to normal L-aspartyl residues. We detected this enzyme in 45 species from 23 families representing most of the divisions of the plant kingdom. MT activity is often localized in seeds, suggesting that it has a role in the...