Dr. Patricia Bedinger Associate Professor  Department of Biology  Bedinger@lamar.colostate.edu

Research activities center on two areas. The first is that of pollination, focusing on the role of proteins in the pollen tube. Mutagenized genes encoding pollen tube proteins called the PEX (Pollen Extensin-like proteins) will be used to transform plants and to study their association with the pollen tube cell wall and their potential for enabling cross-species pollination. In addition, antisense gene constructs in transgenic plants will be used to alter the expression of these genes. A second area of research is the study of mutations that affect male fertility. Several male-sterile mutations generated from transposon-containing maize lines are being analyzed, with the goal of cloning the mutated genes using transposon tagging. Functions of the cloned genes will be analyzed using a variety of approaches including transgenic studies.