| abstract |
Methods are provided for altering grain characteristics by introducing into plants, isolated nucleic acid molecules that can be used to produce transgenic plants characterized by altered number, type, or configuration of aleurone cells within the seed. Also provided are isolated nucleic acids that encode maize dek1 and superal proteins, vectors capable of expressing such nucleic acid molecules, host cells containing such vectors, and polypeptides encoded by such nucleic acids. Also provided is an isolated promoter natively associated with the maize dek1 coding region; and expression cassettes, vectors, and host cells comprising the promoter sequence. |