Department of Horticultural Science, University of Minnesota, 1970 Folwell Avenue, St. Paul, MN 55108, USA.
BMC Plant Biol. 2010 Dec 17;10:280. doi: 10.1186/1471-2229-10-280.
Meiosis is a critical process in the reproduction and life cycle of flowering plants in which homologous chromosomes pair, synapse, recombine and segregate. Understanding meiosis will not only advance our knowledge of the mechanisms of genetic recombination, but also has substantial applications in crop improvement. Despite the tremendous progress in the past decade in other model organisms (e.g., Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Drosophila melanogaster), the global identification of meiotic genes in flowering plants has remained a challenge due to the lack of efficient methods to collect pure meiocytes for analyzing the temporal and spatial gene expression patterns during meiosis, and for the sensitive identification and quantitation of novel genes.
A high-throughput approach to identify meiosis-specific genes by combining isolated meiocytes, RNA-Seq, bioinformatic and statistical analysis pipelines was developed. By analyzing the studied genes that have a meiosis function, a pipeline for identifying meiosis-specific genes has been defined. More than 1,000 genes that are specifically or preferentially expressed in meiocytes have been identified as candidate meiosis-specific genes. A group of 55 genes that have mitochondrial genome origins and a significant number of transposable element (TE) genes (1,036) were also found to have up-regulated expression levels in meiocytes.
These findings advance our understanding of meiotic genes, gene expression and regulation, especially the transcript profiles of MGI genes and TE genes, and provide a framework for functional analysis of genes in meiosis.
减数分裂是有花植物繁殖和生命周期中的一个关键过程，在此过程中同源染色体配对、联会、重组和分离。了解减数分裂不仅将推进我们对遗传重组机制的认识，而且在作物改良方面也有很大的应用。尽管在过去十年中，其他模式生物（如酿酒酵母和黑腹果蝇）在这方面取得了巨大进展，但由于缺乏有效的方法来收集纯减数分裂细胞以分析减数分裂过程中的时空基因表达模式，以及用于敏感鉴定和定量新基因，因此，鉴定有花植物减数分裂基因仍然是一个挑战。
通过结合分离的减数分裂细胞、RNA-Seq、生物信息学和统计分析管道，开发了一种高通量方法来鉴定减数分裂特异性基因。通过分析具有减数分裂功能的研究基因，定义了一种鉴定减数分裂特异性基因的管道。已经鉴定出 1000 多个在减数分裂细胞中特异性或优先表达的基因作为候选减数分裂特异性基因。还发现一组 55 个具有线粒体基因组起源和大量转座元件（TE）基因（1036 个）的基因在减数分裂细胞中表达水平上调。
这些发现推进了我们对减数分裂基因、基因表达和调控的认识，特别是 MGI 基因和 TE 基因的转录谱，为减数分裂中基因的功能分析提供了一个框架。
