Candidate Gene Approaches to Study Genes Affecting Meiotic Chromosome Organization in Arabidopsis thaliana

Meiosis represents an important event in the life cycle of all sexually reproducing organisms. It is a specialized cell division comprising of a single round of DNA replication followed by two rounds of nuclear division resulting in four haploid daughter cells from a single diploid mother cell. Meiosis involves a series of complex chromosomal events such as homologue pairing, synapsis, recombination and bivalent formation. Several genes have been identified in different organisms including plants that play critical roles at various stages of meiosis. Nevertheless, certain key aspects of meiosis such as its regulation and meiotic chromatin organization remain poorly understood especially in plants. Therefore, it would be of great interest to elucidate function of such genes and the molecular mechanisms governing these aspects of plant meiosis owing to the significance it harbors in the field of agriculture. In this thesis, I present functional characterization of the AML gene family and the AtSCC2 gene, both of which are critical for chromatin organization and meiotic progression in plants.