Life Sciences Commons^™

The Genetic Basis Of Adaptation To Environmental Stress In Two Grass Genomic Model Systems, David Mitchell Goad

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Plants are exposed to a wide variety of environmental stress in the wild and have developed an equally diverse set of adaptations to tolerate them. The evolutionary processes that have led to this functional diversification, and the specific genes and physiological mechanisms involved, are of immense interest to both evolutionary biologists and crop breeders. In this dissertation I investigate adaptation to different types of environmental stress in two economically important grass species, seashore paspalum (Paspalum vaginatum Sw.) and rice (Oryza sativa L.).

Seashore paspalum is a halophytic turfgrass that occupies habitats which can dramatically differ in salt concentration. Populations may …

Efficacy Of Conditional And Constitutive Crispr/Cas9 In Rice Genome, Zahra Alizada

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Constitutive expression of Cas9 leads to a higher editing efficiency; however, it also increases the chances of off-target mutations. Thus, transient expression of Cas9 is a desirable approach to achieve higher targeting efficiency and to curb the off-target effects. It was previously shown that heat-inducible expression of Cas9 had an editing efficiency of 45% as compared to the strong constitutive expression, and the heat-shock induced mutations were inherited by the next generation. In this study, cold-inducible promoter, AtRD29a, was used for driving Cas9 expression, and evaluated for its editing efficiency upon cold-treatment on the GUS transgene loci. The expression analysis …