Biotechnologies for the management of genetic resources for food and agriculture.

In recent years, the land area under agriculture has declined as also has the rate of growth in agricultural productivity while the demand for food continues to escalate. The world population now stands at 7 billion and is expected to reach 9 billion in 2045. A broad range of agricultural genetic diversity needs to be available and utilized in order to feed this growing population.

Feedback from rhodopsin controls rhodopsin exclusion in Drosophila photoreceptors.

Sensory systems with high discriminatory power use neurons that express only one of several alternative sensory receptor proteins. This exclusive receptor gene expression restricts the sensitivity spectrum of neurons and is coordinated with the choice of their synaptic targets. However, little is known about how it is maintained throughout the life of a neuron.

Circadian control of messenger RNA stability. Association with a sequence-specific messenger RNA decay pathway.

Transcriptional and posttranscriptional regulation are well-established mechanisms for circadian gene expression. Among the latter, differential messenger RNA (mRNA) stability has been hypothesized to control gene expression in response to the clock. However, direct proof that the rate of mRNA turnover can be regulated by the clock is lacking.

AtPARN is an essential poly(A) ribonuclease in Arabidopsis.

Deadenylation is the first and rate-limiting step in the degradation of many mRNAs in a wide-range of organisms from yeast to higher eukaryotes. It can also play a regulatory role in early development. In this study, we examined the Arabidopsis homolog of poly(A) ribonuclease (PARN), a deadenylase first identified in mammals and absent from yeast.