Analysis of Seed Proteins, Isozymes, and RFLPs for Genetic and Evolutionary Studies in Phaseolus

Abstract

Common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) has been used repeatedly as an experimental organism to derive important concepts in genetics. After discovering the rules of segregation and independent assortment governing the inheritance of heritable traits in pea (Pisum sativum L.), Mendel (1865) confirmed his observations on peas in crosses involving P. nanus (nowadays bush P. vulgaris) and P. vulgaris (nowadays climbing P. vulgaris). Johannsen (1909) was instrumental in introducing the distinction between phenotype and genotype following his investigations of seed size in pure lines of P. vulgaris. The first example to our knowledge of a linkage between a marker locus and a quantitative trait locus (QTL) was provided by Sax (1923) who established an association between a locus for seed pigmentation and a seed size factor in common bean. More recently, one of the first plant genes to be cloned was a gene for phaseolin seed protein (Sun et al. 1981). A comparison of the nucleotide sequence of cDNA and genomic clones of phaseolin established the presence of intervening sequences in higher plants in addition to other eukaryotic organisms. Our understanding of how plants defend themselves against pathogens has been considerably enhanced by the studies of Lamb and collaborators (reviewed in Dixon and Lamb 1990) on the relationship between common bean and Colletotrichum lindemuthianum, causal agent of anthracnose.KeywordsSodium Dodecyl SulfateCommon BeanSeed ProteinRestriction Fragment Length Polymorphism AnalysisTepary BeanThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.