Studies on Gene Expression During Flower Development in Brassica napus

Floral development is central to the life cycle of the plant. It is the most complex example of tissue differentiation, and as such is appropriate to study in order to gain more knowledge of how a plant develops. In recent years the understanding of flower development has been greatly advanced by molecular and genetic studies of floral mutants of two species, Arabidopsis thaliana and Antirrhinum majus. In order to obtain a panel of genes which are expressed in the early stages of floral morphogenesis, it was decided to make and differentially screen a cDNA library. However the Arabidopsis plant is small and it is difficult to obtain sufficient tissue to allow the production of a floral apex cDNA library. Therefore Brassica napus, a closely related member of the Cruciferae, was used to construct a cDNA library from floral buds at an early stage of morphogenesis