Abstract
Background: Male reproduction is an essential biological event in the plant life cycle separating the diploid sporophyte and haploid gametophyte generations, which involves expression of approximately 20,000 genes. The control of male reproduction is also of economic importance for plant breeding and hybrid seed production. With the advent of forward and reverse genetics and genomic technologies, a large number of male reproduction-related genes have been identified. Thus it is extremely challenging for individual researchers to systematically collect, and continually update, all the available information on genes and mutants related to plant male reproduction. The aim of this study is to manually curate such gene and mutant information and provide a web-accessible resource to facilitate the effective study of plant male reproduction.Description: Plant Male Reproduction Database (PMRD) is a comprehensive resource for browsing and retrieving knowledge on genes and mutants related to plant male reproduction. It is based upon literature and biological databases and includes 506 male sterile genes and 484 mutants with defects of male reproduction from a variety of plant species. Based on Gene Ontology (GO) annotations and literature, information relating to a further 3697 male reproduction related genes were systematically collected and included, and using in text curation, gene expression and phenotypic information were captured from the literature. PMRD provides a web interface which allows users to easily access the curated annotations and genomic information, including full names, symbols, locations, sequences, expression patterns, functions of genes, mutant phenotypes, male sterile categories, and corresponding publications. PMRD also provides mini tools to search and browse expression patterns of genes in microarray datasets, run BLAST searches, convert gene ID and generate gene networks. In addition, a Mediawiki engine and a forum have been integrated within the database, allowing users to share their knowledge, make comments and discuss topics.Conclusion: PMRD provides an integrated link between genetic studies and the rapidly growing genomic information. As such this database provides a global view of plant male reproduction and thus aids advances in this important area.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 215 |
| Journal | BMC Plant Biology |
| Volume | 12 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 15 Nov 2012 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:We thank Prof. Hugh Dickinson, Prof. Weicai Yang, Prof. Chris Franklin, Dr. Bing Zhang, Prof. Lijia Qu, Prof. David Twell, Prof. Yaoguang Li, Prof. De Ye and Dr. Jie Xu for helpful discussions. We would also like to thank the BBSRC China Partnership Scheme for providing the opportunity to link together colleagues working in Plant Reproduction in the UK and China, and initiating the idea for a reproduction database. This work was supported by Funds from the National Natural Science Foundation of China [31110103915 and 30830014 to DB.Z.]; from the National Basic Research Program of China [2013CB129602 to DB.Z.]; the Chinese Transgenic Project [2011ZX08012-002 to DB.Z]; the National 863 High-Tech Project [2011AA10A101 and 2012AA10A302 to DB.Z]; and a project funded by the Priority Academic Program Development of Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions.
UN SDGs
This output contributes to the following UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
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SDG 3 Good Health and Well-being
Keywords
- Anther
- Database
- Gene
- Mutant
- Plant male reproduction
- Pollen
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