Academia Sinica researchers yesterday said they had discovered a protein in corn that ensures successful meiotic recombination during sexual reproduction, which could be used to breed higher-yielding crops.
A team led by assistant research fellow Wang Chung-ju (王中茹) identified a maize protein, DSY2, and revealed its roles in chromosome pairing during meiosis — a type of cell division that reduces the chromosome number by half to produce male and female reproductive cells, such as pollen and ovules in flowering plants.
To maintain a constant number of chromosomes in a species, male and female cells pair and recombine with each other via repair of programmed DNA double-strand breaks (DSBs) during the meiotic recombination, which exchanges parts of DNA from paternal and maternal chromosomes to create new combinations of genetic material, thus providing genetic diversity among individuals and is the molecular basis of crop breeding, Wang told a news conference on Friday.
Wang’s team found that the DSY2 protein, located on the chromosome axes, is required for the DSB formation and synapsis — the assembly of the synaptonemal complex that provides a tight connection between paired chromosomes during meiosis, she said, adding that production of viable reproductive cells relies on these processes.
By forming a distinct pattern with the other axial protein and interacting with the other central element protein, the DSY2 serves as a key factor in forming a protein structure between chromosomes to mediate chromosome pairing, synapsis and recombination, she said.
In mutant plants with nonfunctional DSY2, paternal and maternal chromosomes fail to recognize each other, leading to sterile plants, Wang said.
This study provides a new insight into the role of chromosome axis-associated proteins and reveals the mechanism of synaptonemal complex assembly at the molecular level in plants, she said.
Maize is an important staple food for more than 1.2 billion people and is also widely used to feed livestock and as a component in industrial products, Wang said, adding that the results could be used to advance maize breeding to produce high yielding crops or to be extended to other plants, such as rice and barley.
Wang’s study was nominated as “noteworthy maize primary literature” by the US informatics service on maize, the MaizeGDB Editorial Board, she said.
The complete article titled “The Axial Element Protein DESYNAPTIC2 Mediates Meiotic Double-Strand Break Formation and Synaptonemal Complex Assembly in Maize” was published by the US academic journal Plant Cell last month.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching