Constitution and characterization of maize lines with down-regulation of nfc102 gene expression

Abstract

The nfc102 gene encodes a WD-repeat protein belonging to the Multicopy suppressor of IRA (MSI) family, originally identified in yeast (Ruggieri et al., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 86: 8778- 8782, 1989). In maize, five genes of the MSI family have been identified and named nfc by the Plant Chromatin DB USA initiative (http://www.chromdb.org), because they display homology with one of the NURF complex component, where NURF is the Nucleosome Remodeling Factor: a multi-proteins complex that regulates transcription by catalyzing nucleosome sliding (Kwon and Wagner, Trends Genet. 23:403-412, 2007)