ANALYSIS OF MESSENGER-RNAS FROM RIPENING WHEAT SEEDS - THE EFFECT OF HIGH-TEMPERATURE

High temperatures during grain filling are considered one of the facto rs that can modify dough properties and quality in wheat. In this stud y we analysed four Italian wheat cultivars grown under different tempe rature conditions to study the influence of high temperature on storag e-protein-gene expression. Plants were grown both in the field and in growth cabinets, and were subjected to different thermal regimes. Poly A(+) mRNAs were extracted from control and stressed plants at differen t stages of kernel development. Northern blot hybridisations were perf ormed using probes for storage and heat shock proteins to monitor the expression of the relative genes under different temperature condition s. Northern analyses, performed using storage protein probes, indicate d that temperature variation does not influence the synthesis of any o f the storage protein mRNAs. On the contrary, the hybridisation signal s obtained using heat shock probes were more intense in the stressed s amples, indicating that the expression of heat shock genes is modulate d by the temperature variation. (C) 1998 Academic Press Limited.