Plant Genome Outreach to Native Americans

Home

Goals

Participants

Maize Segregation Distortion

Browse Data

Germplasm Conservation

Traditional Uses of Plants

Using simple sequence repeats to identify the presence of Ab10 in maize

Alexandra Volker¹, Von Mark Cruz², Candice Gardner^2,3, Carolyn Lawrence^2,3,4

1. Iowa State University, Ames, IA 50011
2. Dept. of Agronomy, Iowa State University, Ames, IA 50011
3. USDA-ARS
4. Dept. of Genetics, Developmental, and Cellular Biology, Iowa State University, Ames, IA 50011

Conservation of genetic diversity in maize is important to both modern breeders and Native American tribes. The presence of Abnormal Chromosome 10 (Ab10) potentially threatens the genetic diversity of maize due to preferential segregation of all chromosome knobs and linked loci. To identify the presence of Ab10, SSR markers were developed to diagnose chromosome constitution. Thus far, no SSRs have been found that conclusively distinguish Ab10 from the normal chromosome 10 (N10). Further work to develop molecular markers is required to determine whether Ab10 reduces the genetic diversity of seed stocks.