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Secretory and glandular trichomes (SGTs) are found on the surfaces of above ground plant tissues of approximately one third of all vascular plant species. Humans are familiar with these structures because they contain the essential oils that give cooking herbs their distinctive smell and taste. In addition to making foods taste better, these uni- and multi-cellular appendages are proposed to play a critical role in plant protection against various environmental stresses including herbivore attack, pathogen infection, extreme temperature, and excessive light.

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Related research:
Scientists at the Noble Foundation recently published a description of their TrichOME comparative 'omics database.

For past news click here.

Summer Internships 2012:
The seventh annual Plant Genomics @ Michigan State University Summer Undergraduate Research Program. Will run in summer 2012. For information click here.

 

Updated 01/12

Recent publications from the project:

NEWEST: Kim, J., K. Kang, E. Gonzales-Vigil, F. Shi, C.S. Barry, A.D. Jones and R.L. Last. 2012. Mass spectrometry reveals strong diversity in glandular trichome acylsugars of the wild tomato Solanum habrochaites. Plant Physiol. Published online. doi:10.1104/pp.112.204735

Schilmiller, A.L., A.L. Charbonneau and R.L. Last. 2012. Identification of a BAHD acetyltransferase that produces protective acyl sugars in tomato trichomes. Proc. Natl. Acad. U.S.A. 109:16377-16382. doi:10.1073/pnas.1207906109.

Milo, R. and R.L. Last. 2012. Achieving diversity in the face of constraints - lessons from metabolism. Science. 336:1663-1667. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22745419

S.S. Nadakuduti, M.R. Pollard, D.K. Kosma, C. Allen Jr., J. Ohlrogge and C. Barry. (2012). Pleiotropic phenotypes of the sticky peel (pe) mutant provide new insight into the role of CUTIN DEFICENT 2 in epidermal cell function in tomato. Plant Physiology http:/​/​dx.​doi.​org/​10.​1104/​pp.​112.​198374

Gonzales-Vigil, E., D.E. Hufnagel, J. Kim, R.L. Last and C.S. Barry. (2012) Evolution of TPS20-related terpene synthases influences chemical diversity in the glandular trichomes of the wild tomato relative Solanum habrochaites. Plant J.71: 921–935. DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-313X.2012.05040.x

Schilmiller , A.L., E. Pichersky and R.L. Last. (2012) Taming the hydra of specialized metabolism: how systems biology and comparative approaches are revolutionizing plant biochemistry. Curr. Opin. Plant Biol. Published Online 12 January. DOI 10.1016/j.pbi.2011.12.005

L. W. Sumner, D. S. Yang, B. J. Bench, B. S. Watson, C. Li, and A. D. Jones.  Spatially resolved plant metabolomics. in Biology of Plant Metabolomics, Annual Plant Reviews, Volume 43, R. Hall, Ed., Chapter 11, pp. 344-366, Wiley/Blackwell, 2011. doi: 10.1002/9781444339956.ch11

Falara, V., T. Akhtar, T.H. Nguyen, E.A. Spyropoulou, P.M. Bleeker, I. Schauvinhold, Y. Matsuba, M.E. Bonini, A.L. Schilmiller, R.L. Last, R.C. Schuurink and E. Pichersky. (2011) Plant Physiol. doi: 10.1104/pp.111.179648

Schmidt, A., Li, C., Shi, F., Jones, D. and Pichersky, E. (2011) Polymethylated myricetin in trichomes of the wild tomato species Solanum habrochaites and characterization of trichome specific 3'/5' and 7/4' myricetin O-methyltransferases. Plant Physiol. 155:1999-2009 OPEN ACCESS.

McDowell et al. (2011) Comparative functional genomic analysis of Solanum glandular trichome types. Plant Physiol. 155:524-539 OPEN ACCESS.




For the full list of publications from this project click here.

For past news click here

The project has been funded by the NSF Plant Genome Research Program for a second time. We are grateful to the Division of Integrative and Organismal Systems at NSF. For information about the award, please click here.

Summer internships in plant genomics

S. lycopersicum trichome proteomics data now in GenBank.

2.3 Million project EST sequences available in GenBank.

454 ESTs:
ESTs of total trichomes of S. lycopersicum LA3475 (M82 cultivated tomato) are available as experiment SRX004021.

ESTs of type VI glands of S. lycopersicum LA3475 (M82 cultivated tomato) are available as experiment SRX004022.

ESTs of total trichomes of S. pennellii LA0716 are available as experiment SRX011590.

ESTs of total trichomes of S. habrochaites LA1777 are available as experiment SRX011591.

ESTs of type VI glands of S. habrochaites LA1777 are available as experiment SRX011592.

ESTs of type VI glands of S. pimpinellifolium LA1589  are available as experiment SRX011593.

ESTs of type VI glands of S. arcanum LA1708 are available as experiment SRX011594.

Sanger ESTs:
A total of 26,000 Sanger EST sequences from the project are available from GenBank. These are from S. habrochaites PI126449 type VI glands, S. habrochaites LA1777 types I and IV glands, S. lycopersicum LA3475 types I and VII and S. pennellii LA0716 types IV and VI glands.

Computer assembled consensus assemblies for these trichome ESTs are available for search here. Note that these contigs have not been assessed by human annotation or experimentally validated.

The Solanum Trichome Project is a collaborative functional genomics project funded by a National Science Foundation grant to Michigan State University, The University of Michigan and The University of Arizona. Did you find a bug or an error? Please let us know. Website contents Copyright Michigan State University.

 


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