General Characterization of Telomerase Activity in Selaginella moellendorffii

Indianapolis, IN

Selaginella moellendorffii is a model fern species that has been used to advance our understanding of the evolution of telomere maintenance in plants, especially how it compares in ferns and the more highly evolved angiosperms. Studying the telomerase activity of such a plant would provide further insight into the molecular evolution of this important characteristic in plants. Based on known molecular similarities between S. moellendorffii and A. thaliana, it is possible to identify putative telomere associated proteins. PCR primers were designed for each of the identified genes, and used in numerous qRT-PCR reactions with extracted tissue collected from S. moellendorffii. Furthermore, the effects of two plant hormones, indole-3-acetic acid (IAA or Auxin) and abscisic acid (ABA), were observed to determine their effect on the expression of these telomere-related genes in S. moellendorffii. As expected, IAA generally increased expression and ABA generally decreased it, however, the results were generally inconsistent between replications.