Within the plant family of Brassicaceae the majority of plants form dehiscent fruits that open upon maturity to release their ripe seeds. Nevertheless, plants with indehiscent non opening fruits evolved several times independently within this family. We are interested in the ecological significance and the genetic mechanisms of this phenomenon. With special focus on two model species Lepidium campestre with dehiscent fruits and Lepidium appelianum with indehiscent fruits, we study the developmental-genetic background of the rapid, parallel evolution of this morphological character.
From the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana (also a member of the Brassicaceae) it is known that mutations in certain fruit developmental genes such as SHATTERPROOF1 (SHP1), SHP2, FRUITFULL, ALCATRAZ, REPLUMLESS and INDEHISCENT result in the formation of indehiscent fruits. During the course of this project we want to figure out as to whether changes in orthologues of these genes contributed to the evolutionary origin of fruit indehiscence within the Lepidium species. This involves cloning of respective candidate genes, analysis of gene expression patterns, development of suitable transformation systems for Lepidium and heterologous transformation experiments.
| Contact: | Teresa Lenser |
| Guenter Theissen |
Grant: TH 417/6-1 of the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG)
This project is carried out in cooperation with a group at the University of Osnabrück (Prof. Klaus Mummenhoff, Department of Systematic Botany).
Suggested reading:
Mummenhoff, K., Polster, A., Mühlhausen, A., and Theißen, G. (2009).
Lepidium as a model system for studying the evolution of fruit development in Brassicaceae.
J. Exp. Bot. 60, 1503-1513
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