Main description:

Plant Centromere Biology is dedicated to plant centromere research. Chapters cover the structure of centromeres from several plant species including Arabidopsis thaliana, rice, maize, wheat and beet, while other sections cover several unique characteristics associated with plant centromeres, including classical and modern neocentromeres, centromere drive and centromere misdivision. Additional chapters are dedicated to epigenetic modification and evolution of plant centromeres, and development and application of plant artificial chromosomes. Written by an international group of experts in the field, Plant Centromere Biology is a valuable handbook for all plant scientists working on plant genome research. Beyond the bench, it can also serve as a helpful reference tool or textbook for upper level college classes on cytogenetics or genome analysis.

Contents:

Contributors vii Preface ix Chapter 1 Arabidopsis Centromeres 3 Minoru Murata Chapter 2 Rice Centromeres 15 Jiming Jiang Chapter 3 Maize Centromeres 25 Gernot Presting Chapter 4 A Molecular Cytogenetic Analysis of the Structure, Evolution, and Epigenetic Modifi cations of Major DNA Sequences in Centromeres of Beta Species 39 Falk Zakrzewski, Beatrice Weber, and Thomas Schmidt Chapter 5 Centromere Synteny among Brachypodium, Wheat, and Rice 57 Lili Qi, Bernd Friebe, and Bikram S. Gill Chapter 6 CENH3 for Establishing and Maintaining Centromeres 67 Inna Lermontova and Ingo Schubert Chapter 7 Holokinetic Centromeres 83 Stefan Heckmann and Andreas Houben Chapter 8 Is the Heterochromatin of Meiotic Neocentromeres a Remnant of the Early Evolution of the Primitive Centromere? 95 Maria J. Puertas and Alfredo Villasante Chapter 9 Misdivision of Centromeres 111 Adam J. Lukaszewski Chapter 10 Female Meiotic Drive in Monkeyfl owers: Insight into the Population Genetics of Selfi sh Centromeres 129 Lila Fishman Chapter 11 Plant Centromere Epigenetics 147 Ryan N. Douglas and James A. Birchler Chapter 12 Centromere Evolution 159 Jiming Jiang Chapter 13 Centromere-Mediated Generation of Haploid Plants 169 Maruthachalam Ravi and Simon W.-L. Chan Chapter 14 Engineered Plant Chromosomes 183 Robert T. Gaeta and James A. Birchler Index 193 Color plate is located between pages 182 and 183