This award supports three short term research visits by Dr. Peter Peterson of Iowa State University to the Max-Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research in Cologne, FRG, to enhance his domestic research by collaboration with Dr. Heinz Saedler and others. The objective of their joint work is to gain a better understanding of the regulation of transposition and gene expression in maize. Their research plans include efforts to 1) investigate further the relationship of newly arisen unstable alleles to currently known mutable systems; 2) analyze the En system by isolating mutants controlling the several specific functions of the En element; 3) pursue the genetic analysis of mutable alleles at several loci in order to isolate mutant derivatives for additional molecular studies; 4) analyze populations of maize for the distribution of mutable elements; and 5) trap master elements at cloned loci for their use in tagging genes. A coordinated genetic (Iowa) and molecular (Germany) approach is necessary for most of this work. Dr. Peterson has all the facilities and genetic information and techniques to manipulate the genetic material. Dr. Saedler's group has the molecular biology technology well developed and has personnel to carry out the molecular level analyses. Studies of mobile elements in maize have made considerable progress in the past few years, with the isolation and cloning of several elements and the subsequent cloning of a number of genes. This progress is attributable to the combined efforts of molecular biologists and geneticists, including these collaborators. Early work has elucidated the general structure of the elements, their component parts, and their genetic effects. This work has generated the development of models to explain the role of these elements in inducing changes in the genome as well as in individual genes. The proposed collaboration will carry this work further, leading eventually to experiments on tagging desirable genes that are important to agriculture.
