Current areas of investigation within the Moore group:
Cereal genome organisation
In the early 1990’s, Arabidopsis was being proposed as the main model for plant science, but at the same time, we proposed and then demonstrated that gene order was conserved between rice and wheat despite their genomes differing greatly in size (Moore et al., 1993; Moore et al., 1994;). Other cereal genomes were examined, and conservation of gene order (synteny) was found at the genetic and physical level (Moore et al., 1994; Dunford et al., 1995; Foote et al., 1997; Griffiths et al., 2006). More...
Wheat meiosis and the Ph1 locus
The Ph1 locus has been defined to a cluster of Cdk2-like (CDK2L) genes, which show close homology to Cdk2 in humans and mice (Griffiths et al., 2006; Al-Kaff et al., 2007). Cell biological and synapsis studies reveal that, like its human counterpart, Ph1 CDK2L affects processes during replication, controls chromatin remodelling and affects the mismatch repair mechanism. More...
Centromeres
Cereal comparative mapping studies in the mid-1990’s suggested that centromeric sequences might be conserved across the cereal genomes. We hypothesized that centromere sites would contain conserved centromere elements, and that centromeres may play a key role in the initial chromosome pairing process in meiosis. We confirmed this hypothesis by being the first to identify a conserved element (CCS1) found in all cereal centromeric regions (Aragon-Alcaide et al, 1996). More...
Chemical modification of chromosome pairing
The Ph1 locus prevents pairing of wheat chromosomes with those of related species, which restricts the introduction of useful agronomic traits into commercial varieties. If Ph1 is absent, wheat chromosomes can pair with related chromosomes from other species, but the resultant hybrids are unstable. More...
Fine mapping of the crossability locus, Kr1, in hexaploid wheat
Most elite European wheat varieties carry dominant crossability (Kr) genes which reduce the ability to successfully produce interspecific hybrids. This makes the transfer of novel traits from exotic germplasm into elite varieties inefficient. Four Kr genes have been identified in wheat: Kr1 on 5BL, Kr2 on 5AL, Kr3 on 5D and Kr4 on 1A, with Kr1 having the largest effect on crossability. More...
Wheat gametocidal genes
The effects of an important phenomenon (the gametocidal factor, Gc) in breeding were first observed when introducing chromosomes carrying agronomically useful traits from related wild grasses (Aegilops species) into wheat. Particular chromosomes from the wild species were found to be preferentially transmitted in wheat because they caused chromosome fragmentation and hence sterility in the developing wheat gametes not carrying them. We are interested in the gametocidal genes on chromosomes that have been introduced into wheat from Aegilops sharonensis as substitutions for group 4 chromosomes. These chromosomes have a particularly pronounced effect in inducing chromosome fragmentation in the developing gametes in which they are not present. More...
