17. Group of Developmental Genetics of Plants.

(1) Staff:

• Sergey E. Peltek, Ph.D., Head of the Group
• Tatyana N. Goryachkovskaya, Ph.D.
• Pavel N. Vishnivetskiy, Ph.D.
• Olga N. Tseveleva
• Svetlana V. Bannikova

(2) Subject of Research:

(3) General Results 1993-1995:

(4) Publications:

1. Goryachkovskaya T.N., Zheleznov A.V., Zheleznova N.B., Peltek S.E. (1995). Storage proteins variability in Agropyron cristatum L. population. Genetika 31:68-71. (Rus.)
2. Shumny V.K., Kolchanov N.A., Dygalo N.N., Matveeva V.G., Ivanova L.N., Voevoda M.I., Romashenko A.G., Karakin E.I., Kiknadze I.I., Budachkina E.B., Peltek S.E. (1995). Genetic effects of radiation and other man-made pollution in Siberia. In: Koptyug V.A., Klerkx J. (Eds.) Science Policy: New Mechanisms for Scientific collaboration between East and West. Netherlands, Kluwer Academic Publishers, pp.69-80.
3. Peltek S.E., Goryachkovskaya T.N., Kel A.E., Babenko V.N. Genetic control of cereal grain starage protein. In: Unifying Plant Genomes: Comparisons, Conservation and Colinearity, Cambridge.

(5) Participation in State and International Programs:

(6) Subject of Scientific Collaboration:

Genetic control of seed storage proteins; its expression and occurrence frequencies in natural populations of plant.

This study is concerned with the system of storage protein genes of A.cristatum, a counterpart of the one established in wheats. The electrophoretic pattern obtained from seed storage protein is 10 - 20 banded, with each band representing a corresponding component. The total number of components revealed in all the six populations was 46.

It should be recalled that prolamines are under a similar genetic control in the majority of cereals. As visualized by Western immunoblotting, the homology degree between the seed storage protein of A.cristatum and wheat is high. This suggests that seed storage protein of A.cristatum may be under the control of a genetic system similar to the one established for wheat.

Modelling of linkage groups has demonstrated that a part of storage protein components with the same electrophoretic mobilities in various populations of A.cristatum, like different wheat varieties, were encoded by genes of distinct linkage groups. It is well established that each fraction of seed storage protein is encoded by one of the cistrons of the corresponding family in the cereal genome. Pertinent is our observation that there exists a whole system providing coordinate expression of genes in the wheat genome (Peltek et al., 1986). It is reasonable to assume that this system controls storage protein pattern in single seed. The features of the system providing the expression of storage protein include cluster organization of repetitive sequences, several clusters in the genome and tandem repeats within cistron, as may be judged by the results obtained with wheat, rice and other cereals ( Miflin et al. 1984, Okita et al.,1989). Along with the expressed genes, pseudogenes have been reported to occur within the family of the gliadin genes (Rafalski,1986). With this organization, gene conversion occurs, as a rule, within or between neighbouring cistrons. Possibly, coordinate expression of the system of seed storage protein demands compensation for a product lost by a cluster, and this is effected by clusters located in the other linkage groups. Thus, a particular set of clusters whose combination determines individual phenotype forms in the course of evolution and selection, and the conßentration of this cluster sets maintains polymorphism in the population. The data on the different composition of components in linkage groups of various A.cristatum populations converge with those of direct localization of the gliadin genes for common wheat indicating that there exists a system for the gene control of the expression of seed storage protein.