Graduation Year
2025
Document Type
Open Access Senior Thesis
Degree Name
Bachelor of Arts
Department
Biology
Reader 1
Findley Finseth
Reader 2
Pattrick Ferree
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Rights Information
© 2025 Ian H Beck
Abstract
In plants, pollinator interactions have been studied for more than 100 years, though these studies tend to focus on traits visible to the human eye, such as scent and petal color. Recently, traits more deceptive to humans, such as conical cells (those on the upward facing /adaxial surface of a petal), have been shown to play an important role in pollinator interactions. The genetic basis of conical cells must be investigated, as they are a fundamental part of plant pollinator interactions that we have yet to fully understand. The R2R3 MYB tfs (repeat 2 repeat 3 myeloblastosis transcription factors) have been shown to affect conical petal cell shape in several models including and beyond the Arabidopsis thaliana plant and thus we aimed to evaluate the viability of A. thaliana as a model to study the role that these R2R3 MYB tfs play in conical cell production. We approached this by growing A. thaliana with a knockout of atMYB16, a gene encoding an R2R3 MYB tf, identified by McAllister et al (2024). We then imaged its petal cells, quantitatively evaluated their conical nature, and identified three genotypic classes – homozygous for atMYB16 (WT), homozygous for the atMYB16 knockout (MT), and heterozygous (HT). We discovered that there was a significant difference between genotypic classes (p-value = 0.012). Our results indicate that there is a strong likelihood that atMYB16 plays a role in the formation of conical petal cells in A. thaliana.
Recommended Citation
Beck, Ian Hirshfield, "The Genetic Basis of Conical Petal Cells in Arabidopsis thaliana" (2025). Pitzer Senior Theses. 223.
https://scholarship.claremont.edu/pitzer_theses/223
