Professor and Georgia Research Alliance Lars G. Ljungdahl
Distinguished Investigator
Ph.D. (1989) University of California, Berkeley

Phone: 706-542-1658
Email: kelly@plantbio.uga.edu

Research in the Dawe Lab

How do chromosomes move? Remarkably little is known about this basic motility event in higher plants. Our approach has been to combine immunocytochemistry, high-resolution 3D light microscopy, and forward genetics to understand the movement of chromosomes.

Lab Members

Awards

Creative Research Medal, University of Georgia, 2000

Research Interests

How do chromosomes move? Remarkably little is known about this basic motility event in higher plants. Our approach has been to combine immunocytochemistry, high-resolution 3D light microscopy, and forward genetics to understand the movement of chromosomes in maize. The organelle primarily responsible for chromosome movement is the kinetochore, which binds to centromeric DNA. Much of our current work is directed towards fulfilling the goals of a recently-renewed genome project on maize centromeres. We have ongoing projects on the roles of Centromeric Histone H3 and Centromere Protein C (CENH3, CENPC) in centromere/kinetochore structure. In addition we are focusing the epigenetic control of centromeres as well as chromatin-level gene silencing in maize heterochromatin. The spectacular cytology of the maize meiocyte, combined with deconvolution-based 3D light microscopy provides us with unparalleled resolution in our analyses.

Selected Publications

Dawe, R.K. 2005. Centromere renewal and replacement in the plant kingdom. Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. USA 102: 11573-11574.

Jin, W., Lamb, J.C., Vega, J.M., Dawe, R.K., Birchler, J.A. and J. Jiang. 2005. Molecular and functional dissection of the maize B chromosome centromere. Plant Cell 17: 1412-1423.

Dawe, R.K., Richardson, E.A. and X. Zhang. 2005. The simple ultrastructure of the maize kinetochore fits a two-domain model. Cytogenet. Genome Res. 109: 128-133.

Zhang, X., Li, X., Marshall, J.B., Zhong, C.X. and R.K. Dawe. 2005. Phosphoserines on maize CENTROMERIC HISTONE H3 and histone H3 demarcate the centromere and pericentromere duringchromosome segregation. Plant Cell 17: 572-583.

Dawe, R.K. 2004. RNA interference on chromosomes. Nat Genet. 36: 1141-1142.

Topp, C.N., Zhong C.X. and R.K. Dawe. 2004. Centromere-encoded RNAs are integral components of the maize kinetochore. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA. 101: 15986-15991.

Lawrence, C.J., Dawe, R.K., Christie, K.R., Cleveland, D.W., Dawson, S.C., Endow, S.A., Goldstein, L.S.B., Goodson, H.V., Hirokawa, N., Howard, J. Malmberg, R.L., McIntosh, J.R., Miki, H., Mitchison, T.J., Okada, Y., Reddy, A.S.N., Saxton, W.M., Schliwa, M., Scholey, J.M., Vale, R.D., Walczak, C.E. and L. Wordeman. 2004. A standardized kinesin nomenclature. J. Cell Biol. 167: 19-22.

Dawe, R.K. and E.N. Hiatt. 2004. Plant neocentromeres: fast, focused and driven. Chromosome Res. 12: 655-669.

Lawrence, C.J., Zmasek, C.M., Dawe, R.K. and R.L. Malmberg. 2004. LumberJack: a heuristic tool for sequence alignment exploration and phylogenetic inference. Bioinformatics 20: 1977-1979.

Jin. W., Melo, J.R., Nagaki, K., Talbert, P.B., Henikoff, S., Dawe, R.K. and J. Jiang. 2004. Maize centromeres: fine structure and functional adaptation in the genetic background of oat. Plant Cell 16: 571-581.

Jiang, J., Birchler, J.A., Parrott, W.A. and R.K. Dawe. 2003. A molecular view of plant centromeres. Trends Plant Sci. 8: 570-575.

Mroczek, R.J. and R.K. Dawe. 2003. Distribution of retroelements in centromeres and neocentromeres of maize. Genetics 165: 809-819.

Birchler, J.A., Dawe, R.K. and J.F. Doebley. 2003. Marcus Rhoades: Preferential segregation and meiotic drive. Genetics 164: 835-841.

Hiatt, E.N. and R.K. Dawe. 2003. Four loci on Abnormal chromosome 10 contribute to meiotic drive in maize. Genetics 164: 699-709.

Nagaki, K., Talbert, P.B., Zhong, C.X., Dawe R.K., Henikoff. S. and J. Jiang. 2003. Chromatin immunoprecipitation reveals that the 180-bp satellite repeat is the key functional DNA element of Arabidopsis thaliana centromeres. Genetics 163: 1221-1225.

Nagaki, K., Song, J., Stupar, R., Parokonny, A.S., Yuan Q., Ouyang S., Liu J., Dawe, R.K., Buell C.R., and J. Jiang. 2003. Molecular and cytological analyses of large tracks of centromeric DNA reveal the structure and evolutionary dynamics of maize centromeres. Genetics 163: 759-770.

Hiatt, E.N. and R.K. Dawe. 2003. The meiotic drive system on maize abnormal chromosome 10 contains few essential genes. Genetica 117: 67-76.

Dawe, R.K. 2003. RNA interference, transposons, and the centromere. Plant Cell 15: 297-301.