During the embryonic and postembryonic development of plants and animals, cell proliferation and cell differentiation must be coordinated to achieve final organ size, shape and function. It appears that plants and animals utilize distinct strategies to achieve this coordinated cell growth. Plant cells are particularly flexible in that they can be easily cultured in medium and regenerated into an entirely new plant. It was proposed that certain coordination genes, which function differently in plants, might underlie this distinct property of plant cells. Previous genetic analyses of an Arabidopsis thaliana mutant tso1 showed a failure of cell differentiation in the mutant flowers, suggesting that the TSO1 gene might encode such an important coordinator gene. The sequence similarity between the Arabidopsis TSO1 protein and the Drosophila Mip120 protein suggested that TSO1 might function as a crucial component of a chromatin complex. This oneyear pilot project is aimed at establishing several essential tools and reagents necessary for the characterization of TSO1 and testing the hypothesis that TSO1 is a component of a novel plant chromatin complex. These studies may shed light on the unique properties of plant cells in tissue and whole plant regeneration. Due to the conservation of genetic mechanisms between Arabidopsis and other plants, the work will also advance research and application in important crop plants. The project will involve and train Ph.D. students, undergraduate students, and postdoctoral fellows. Efforts will be placed on recruiting students from under representative groups at the University of Maryland and nearby universities.
