Navigating the corn maze: a "optical switch" technology for mapping the corn genome

In the field of agriculture, scientists have been trying to increase the resistance to external forces such as drought, floods or plant viruses by cultivating different crops (such as corn or wheat), thereby increasing crop yields

Hank Bass, professor of biological sciences, said: “The understanding of genome structure should help focus genome editing and accelerate larger-scale applied research, such as guiding research in precision agriculture and medicine

The research was published in the journal PLOS Genetics

Regulatory switches controlled by transcription factors are almost like light switches for genes

"By creating an accurate map of maize regulatory sites and transcription factors, gene expression can be optimized by targeting these sites," said Savannah Savadel, the first author of the paper and FSU alumnus, currently at Baylor College.

Knowing where transcription factors bind to genes allows researchers to understand the biochemistry of gene regulation in normal and pathological environments

Maize is a complex plant that has been studied by hundreds of researchers because it is a good genetic model species and also helps to reveal the inheritance of other plants

Bass and his colleagues used their technique, called MOA-seq, to ​​map small pieces of DNA sequence about 30 base pairs

Reducing the DNA map to a smaller 30 base pairs will allow researchers to use gene editing tools such as CRISPR to modify specific regions of genes

Bass said: "We found high-precision switches in the proof-of-concept test organization of corn ears

Bath has been improving chromatin sensitivity analysis techniques for the past ten years

Jonathan Dennis, associate professor of biological sciences at Fudan University, and Jinfeng Zhang, associate professor of statistics at Fudan University participated in the study.

Savannah D.