Cette conférence se tiendra le 5 octobre
prochain à Rennes. Elle sera animée par Raphaël
Mercier, chargé de recherche - UMR 1318 -Inra -
AgroParisTech Centre de Versailles-Grignon). Cette
Conférence est ouverte à tous les personnels de
recherche.
Apomixis, or asexual clonal reproduction through seeds, is of
immense interest due to its potential revolutionary application in
agriculture. One key element of apomixis is apomeiosis, a
deregulation of meiosis which results in a mitotic-like division.
Meiosis halves the chromosome number because its two divisions
follow a single round of DNA replication. This process involves a
unique cell transition, the meiosis I to meiosis II transition. We
show that OSD1 and the A-type cyclin CYCA1;2/TAM both plays a major
role in this transition in Arabidopsis. By combining either the osd
or the tam mutation with two others affecting key meiotic
processes, we obtained plants producing diploid gametes through a
mitotic-like division, that were genetically identical to their
parents. The obtained plants, called MiMe, produce functional
diploid gametes that are genetically identical to their mother.
Creation of the MiMe genotype and apomeiosis phenotype is an
important step towards understanding and engineering apomixis.