Browsing by Author "Nuorti, Ninni"

DRama Queen (DRQ) is an unknown conserved gene that might be involved with sensing cytokinin signalling in the roots of Arabidopsis thaliana. It was originally found in a mutant screen when a mutated version of it – mDRQ – was found to improve the cytokinin sensitivity of plants in a desensitized genetic background. This thesis was done to define the protoxylem phenotype of mDRQ single mutant in Columbia (Col-0) background and to test the functionality of the gene by analyzing the complementation lines. The protoxylem phenotypes were scored from fuchsin stained samples by DIC microscopy. Protoxylem differentiation in the root of A. thaliana is an outcome of a mutually inhibitory signalling mechanism of auxins and cytokinins. Analysis of protoxylem status is a good tool for studying the cytokinin signalling because the differentiation is affected both by increased and reduced signalling levels. High signalling causes loss of protoxylem phenotypes whereas whereas low cytokinin signalling leads to ectopic protoxylem formation. The data of this thesis was analysed by SPSS version 22 software using cumulative logit modelling for the analysis. It was considered to be the most suitable alternative for analysis since the protoxylem phenotype data is ordinal by its nature. A protoxylem phenotype distribution was defined for mDRQ line and it was statistically different from Col-0. Most of the complementation lines were functional at a statistically significant level though the phenotype distributions of the complementation lines were not identical with original background. The difference could possibly be explained by the fact that the mDRQ gene is partially functional and may influence the phenotype distributions.