Publications by authors named "Helmy M Youssef"

Background: Mutants have had a fundamental impact upon scientific and applied genetics. They have paved the way for the molecular and genomic era, and most of today's crop plants are derived from breeding programs involving mutagenic treatments.

Results: Barley (Hordeum vulgare L.

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Increased salinity is one of the major consequences of climatic change affecting global crop production. The early stages in the barley ( L.) life cycle are considered the most critical phases due to their contributions to final crop yield.

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MADS-box transcription factors are crucial regulators of inflorescence and flower development in plants. Therefore, the recent interest in this family has received much attention in plant breeding programs due to their impact on plant development and inflorescence architecture. The aim of this study was to investigate the role of genes in lateral spikelet development in barley ( L.

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Salinity is one of the major environmental factors that negatively affect crop development, particularly at the early growth stage of a plant and consequently the final yield. Therefore, a set of 50 wild barley ( ssp. , ) introgression lines (ILs) was used to detect QTL alleles improving germination and seedling growth under control, 75 mM, and 150 mM NaCl conditions.

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Ferredoxins are single-electron carrier proteins involved in various cellular reactions. In chloroplasts, the most abundant ferredoxin accepts electrons from photosystem I and shuttles electrons via ferredoxin NADP+ oxidoreductase to generate NADPH or directly to ferredoxin dependent enzymes. In addition, plants contain other isoforms of ferredoxins.

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Barley ( L.) is one of the major grain crops worldwide and considered as a model plant for temperate cereals. One of the barley row-type groups, named barley, was used in our previous study where we reported that other genetic loci rather than and could play a role in lateral spikelet development and even in setting grains.

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Article Synopsis
  • Grasses exhibit different inflorescence shapes, but the genetic factors behind these variations are not well understood, prompting research into the role of the COMPOSITUM 1 (COM1) transcription factor.
  • COM1 has different functions in barley (which promotes branch inhibition) compared to non-Triticeae grasses (which support branch formation), influencing cell growth and wall properties at inflorescence boundaries.
  • This study suggests that COM1 not only regulates meristem identity by interacting with other genes but also is shaped by natural selection, impacting both the evolution of inflorescence structures and potential agricultural breeding strategies.
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Chlorophyll is the light-harvesting molecule central to the process of photosynthesis. Chlorophyll is synthesized through 15 enzymatic steps. Most of the reactions have been characterized using recombinant proteins.

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Biosynthesis of chlorophyll involves several enzymatic reactions of which many are shared with the heme biosynthesis pathway. Magnesium chelatase is the first specific enzyme in the chlorophyll pathway. It catalyzes the formation of Mg-protoporphyrin IX from the insertion of Mg into protoporphyrin IX.

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While continuing our quest towards the identification of the labile (lab) locus in barley, we discovered that the previously assigned map location on the long arm of chromosome 5H was wrong.

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Background: Salinity is a significant environmental stress factor limiting crops productivity. Barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) has a natural tolerance to salinity stress, making it an interesting study object in stress biology research.

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The hormonal ratios along the barley spike regulate the development, atrophy and abortion of the spikelets and could be the mechanism by which the barley spike adapts its yield potential. Barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) is one of the oldest cereal crops known to be cultivated since about 10,000 years.

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GWAS analysis for leaf blade area (LA) revealed intriguing genomic regions associated with putatively novel QTL and known plant stature-related phytohormone and sugar-related genes. Despite long-standing studies in the morpho-physiological characters of leaf blade area (LA) in cereal crops, advanced genetic studies to explore its natural variation are lacking. The importance of modifying LA in improving cereal grain yield and the genes controlling leaf traits have been well studied in rice but not in temperate cereals.

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Plant architecture has clear agronomic and economic implications for crops such as wheat and barley, as it is a critical factor for determining grain yield. Despite this, only limited molecular information is available about how grain-bearing inflorescences, called spikes, are formed and maintain their regular, distichous pattern. Here we elucidate the molecular and hormonal role of Six-rowed spike 2 (Vrs2), which encodes a SHORT INTERNODES (SHI) transcriptional regulator during barley inflorescence and shoot development.

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Inflorescences of the tribe Triticeae, which includes wheat (Triticum sp. L.) and barley (Hordeum vulgare L.

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The recessive labile locus mapped on chromosome 5HL causes irregular spikelet fertility and controls floret development as well as row-type in barley. The labile-barley displays a variable number of fertile spikelets at each rachis internode (0-3 fertile spikelets/rachis internode) which is intermediate between that observed in two- or six-rowed types. Previous re-sequencing of Vrs1 in 219 labile-barley (Hordeum vulgare L.

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Inflorescence architecture of barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) is common among the Triticeae species, which bear one to three single-flowered spikelets at each rachis internode. Triple spikelet meristem is one of the unique features of barley spikes, in which three spikelets (one central and two lateral spikelets) are produced at each rachis internode.

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