About This Project

Soybean is the most important oilseed crop in the world with a production in 2001/02 of about 184.3 million tons of beans over 79.4 million ha. Soybean seeds contain a high nutritional value, rich in proteins and oils, that serve as a major source of food for humans, and recently, as a promising resource for biofuel. Soybean seed development is triggered by a double-fertilization process that leads to the differentiation of the embryo, endosperm, and seed coat that are the major regions of the seed and essential for seed viability and plant reproduction. Many different developmental and physiological events occur within each soybean seed region during development that are programmed, in part, by the activity of different genes. Seed development, therefore, is the result of a mosaic of different gene expression programs occurring in parallel in different seed compartments. What these programs are and how they are organized into unique regulatory circuits within the plant genome to “make a seed” remain major unanswered questions.

The long-term objective of this project is to identify the regulatory networks required for the development of soybean seeds and the seeds of flowering plants. Our research goals are to:

  • Identify the spectrum of genes that are active in different seed compartments (embryo, endosperm, seed coat), regions (embryo proper, suspensor), and tissue types (epidermis, inner integument, outer integument, endothelium, hilum) at major developmental stages (globular, heart, cotyledon, and early maturation).
  • Characterize the spectrum of genes that are active in embryo regions (embryo proper, suspensor, cotyledon, axis) and tissues (epidermis, parenchyma, root and shoot meristems, vascular bundle) at different developmental stages.
  • Describe the cellular processes that occur in different seed compartments, regions, and tissues using bioinformatic approaches.
  • Determine the distribution of transcription factor mRNAs within a seed at different developmental periods, and identify transcription factor mRNAs that are unique for specific compartments, regions, and tissues.
  • Estimate the number of genes required to program all of seed development (i.e., the number of genes required to “make a seed”).
  • Down regulate compartment-, region-, and tissue-specific transcription factors to determine their roles in seed development.

To date, we have:

  • Using LCM and GeneChip technologies, finished profiling mRNAs from every soybean and Arabidopsis seed compartment, region, and tissue throughout development - providing the first comprehensive global atlas of gene activity during all of seed development.
  • Completed 156 GeneChip experiments in both soybean and Arabidopsis, and uploaded all RNA profiling datasets into GEO, as well as onto this interactive NSF-sponsored seed genes website that can be used by the plant community.
  • Provided the first comprehensive insights into gene activity in every part of a seed throughout seed development – providing a novel resource for understanding a spectrum of processes that are required to “make a seed”.
  • Using 454 Sequencing technology, sequenced ~900,000 ESTs from globular-stage soybean seeds - identifying ~7,000 seed genes NOT represented on the current Affymetrix GeneChip and providing an excellent resource for improving the annotation of the soybean genome.
  • Generated ~40 different transgenic soybean lines containing either seed promoter/GUS constructs to characterize promoter transcriptional specificity or promoter/RNAi constructs that target seed-compartment-specific transcription factor mRNAs.

Figure. Summary of All Soybean and Arabidopsis Experiments Carried Out To Date (click on the image to enlarge)