Research Description

Genetic Subfunctionalization in the Polyploid Plant Tragopogon mirus

I am researching subfunctionalization in the polyploid plant Tragopogon mirus. Polyploidy is the process of genome doubling, resulting in organisms with multiple sets of chromosomes. Subfunctionalization occurs when a gene with more than one function, or the same function in more than one tissue or organ, is duplicated, and the two duplicates diverge such that each copy maintains a subset of the original function. Thus, the duplicates eventually have separate subfuntions of the original gene. This project involves extracting RNA from T. mirus tissue, and carrying out reverse transcription reactions to produce cDNA. Genes will be amplified from the cDNAs using PCR primers. The PCR products will be digested with specific restriction enzymes and run on a high-resolution agarose gel to visualize the fragments representative of the different homeologs. This will allow the patterns of silencing to be examined. Knowledge of polyploidy is important because it allows us to understand how plants evolve.