Duplicate genes are a universal feature of many genomes, a key force in changing genome structure and a prominent mechanism for the origin of new gene function. Moreover, gene duplications can have a diverse scope of consequences ranging from causing human genetic disorders to potentially promoting speciation. My goal is to investigate the fate and consequence of a duplication in a regulatory gene that plays an essential role in reproductive organ development in plants. This regulatory gene is duplicated in some grass species including maize, a species in which the duplicated genes ZAG 1/ZMM2 have been cloned and characterized. ZAG1/ZMM2 are part of a large multigene family of transcription factors that have been isolated from animals (including humans), yeast, and plants. Specifically, I will identify the origin and distribution of the ZAG1/ZMM2 duplication in the grasses, characterize the expression patterns of ZAG l/ZMM2 within key grass taxa, and examine the conservation of the protein coding and non-coding cis regulatory regions of ZAG1/ZMM2 in select grasses through experiments using Arabidopsis as a heterologous system. The results from these studies will provide important information regarding the changes in gene structure following gene duplication. Given the prevalence of duplicate genes among eukaryotic genomes, the information garnered from this study will contribute functional information on the fate of duplicate genes that may be applicable not only to plants but to many organisms, including humans.
