Welcome to our Aquilegia project!!!

 

Here is a phenotype I have. The white segregant seedling (lower right) does not survive beyond the codyledon stage!!!

SINCE CLAUDIA IS COMING TO CHICAGO FOR A VISIT AND TO FINISH UP A PAPER FOR 2 WEEKS MAYBE IT IS

A GOOD IDEA TO MEET UP HERE IN  CHICAGO FOR 2-3 DAYS FOR A WORKSHOP AND DISCUSS PROGRESS

AND GIVE TO EACH OTHER FEEDBACK ON OUR WORK

snp allele freq

inbred line Oragami

Borevitz Lab Page

SNPs from EST contigs

Aquilegia References

Aquilegia Gene Index

Physical Map

Genome Sequencing 

Collection trips

The genus Aquilegia (Ranunculaceae) has been the subject of ecological, evolutionary and genetic studies for over 50 years (Hodges and Fulton, 2004). It consists of approximately 70 perennial taxa distributed in temperate North America, Europe and Asia.

Detailed genome wide trait analysis requires the availability of abundant molecular markers. One of the most common sequence variation in organisms is caused  by single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP). In model organisms like Arabidopsis where the genomes are relative small the discovery of SNPs is quite straight forward.

It has been demonstrated recently that oligo arrays can be used for the detection of SNPs in simple organisms like yeast by using whole genomic DNA.  In more complex organisms (barley, rice) the usage of RNA arrays instead of genomic arrays has proven to be sensitive enougth in order to detect polymorphisms.

Several features of  Aquilegia, such as wide species variation among the several environments, species interfertility, allowing the genetic dissection of traits, low sequence variation among species, small genome (320- 400 Mbp) and finally much genetic work is done on making Aquilegia a model system for the study of adaptation to the environment.

In eukaryotes, numerous fixed differences in mesoscale genome structure are evident between closely-related species (Doganlar et al., 2002), such as the occurrence of genes in different (i.e. nonsyntenic) chromosomal positions (Mural et al., 2002) and the shuffling of local order among small numbers of genes. Recently, a number of studies have revealed a surprising amount of intraspecific variability in mesoscale genome structure within eukaryotes, including gene copy number polymorphisms (Adams et al., 2005) and gene order polymorphisms.

We are going to create an oligo array chip for Aquilegia by using the available ESTs developed over the last period so that we can study mesoscale genome structural rearrangements in Aquilegia and address the following questions:

Are there any gene copy differences among ecotypes of Aquilegia reflecting the differences on growth rate of the ecotypes?  What are the functional consequences of gene copy variants in Aquilegia? Specifically, do variants contribute to reproductive isolation or adaptive divergence between species?

Some pictures of Aquilegia from the lab of Elena Kramer!!!!

                             arabidopsis vs origami                                                            formosa vs origami                                                                 origami flower                                                                                   origami in champer 2