Wheat feeds the world. According to the FAO, wheat is one of the world's main crops, both in terms of extent and production, as well as being one of the main sources of carbohydrates and vegetable protein in the human diet. The quest for genetic improvement in wheat, leading to varieties that are more resistant to issues brought about by climate change or certain pests, responds to the need to keep feeding people.
Genetic improvement programs can span decades and entail studying genetic mechanisms of wheat in order to better understand them and hence accomplish more effective research in this field. In this context, a research team made up of Professor Miguel Aguilar, from the Department of Botany, Ecology and Plant Physiology at the University of Cordoba, along with José Garrido and Pilar Prieto, both researchers at the Institute for Sustainable Agriculture (abbreviated to IAS - CSIC in Spanish), was able to further our knowledge of these procedures. They published the set of reliable reference genes in wheat meiosis.
Meiosis is the division process that generates gametes or reproductive cells. During meiosis, chromosome association and genetic recombination occur. These are vital processes for a plant's fertility. Reference genes or normalizing genes are genes whose expression does not change during the biological processes under study. So, these kinds of genes work as a constant in order to be sure that any change of expression observed in other genes can be significantly correlated with the studied process.
The absence of validated reference genes that can be used to study wheat meiosis is what led this team to seek the set of genes that can provide precise measurements of the expression of other genes during the process of meiosis in durum wheat, used to make pasta, and common wheat, used to make bread. This discovery will be useful for future scientific research focused on the genetic improvement of wheat.
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