A second gene, isolated by Kent F. McCue at the Albany center, directs plants to produce a protein called purothionin. Skadsen and colleagues cloned two genes that barley plants use to make the proteins. We're hoping to rebuild the genes so that plants will produce the proteins on leaflike structures that surround the kernel, where Fusarium can begin its attack. The American Malting Barley Association and the North American Barley Genome Mapping Project help fund the research. Help From a Wild Relative A wheat cousin called wild emmer has resistance genes that might be moved into domesticated wheat.
Emmer is a relative of durum wheat, which is used to make flour for pasta and for pizza doughs.
North Dakota State University researchers, along with ARS plant pathologist James D. Miller and ARS geneticists Leonard R. Joppa and Norman D. Williams at Fargo, are crossing emmer with domesticated durum wheats. The work gets some support from grants from the Agricultural Production and Utilization Committee of North Dakota, North Dakota Wheat Commission, and U.S. Durum Growers Association. In other experiments, they are crossing wild emmer with special wheats called aneuploids. That makes it easier to find which emmer chromosome contains a resistance gene. At A marker gene is a sequence of DNA that acts somewhat like a signpost to indicate the presence of a gene of interest.