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Associate Professor;
Ph.D., North Carolina State University, 1992.

Research and Professional Interests:

We are investigating the structure and function of chromosomes during meiosis, when chromosomes are recombined, shuffled, and reduced to the haploid state (during production of sperm or eggs). High-resolution deconvolution microscopy is used to collect multi-wavelength three-dimensional optical reconstructions of whole nuclei in meiotic cells of higher plants. Specific DNA sequences are localized within the nucleus by fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH), and sophisticated software is used to analyze the resulting spatial and quantitative image data. Having adapted novel techniques for 3D FISH with plant meiotic chromosomes (Bass et al., 1997), we are now working on two related projects, the analysis of meiotic telomere behavior and the development of a new cytogenetic map of maize.

Selected Publications:

Bass, H. W., S. J. Bordoli, and E. M. Foss. 2003. The desynaptic (dy) and desynaptic1 (dsy1) mutations in maize (Zea mays L.) cause distinct telomere-misplacement phenotypes during meiotic prophase. Journal of Experimental Botany 54: 39-46.

Koumbaris, G. L., and H. W. Bass. 2003. A new single-locus cytogenetic mapping system for maize (Zea mays L.): overcoming FISH detection limits with marker-selected sorghum (S. propinquum L.) BAC clones. Plant Journal 35: 647-659.

Marian, C. O., S. J. Bordoli, M. Goltz, R. A. Santarella, L. P. Jackson, O. Danilevskaya, M. Beckstette, R. Meeley, and H. W. Bass. 2003. The maize Single myb histone 1 gene, Smh1, belongs to a novel gene family and encodes a protein that binds telomere DNA repeats in vitro. Plant Physiology 133: 1334-1348.

Bass, H. W. 2003. Telomere dynamics unique to meiotic prophase: formation and significance of the bouquet. Cellular and Molecular Life Sciences 60: 2319-2324.

Palko, L., H. W. Bass, M. J. Beyrouthy, and M. M. Hurt. 2004. The Yin Yang-1 (YY1) protein undergoes a DNA replication-associated switch in location from the cytoplasm to the nucleus at the onset of S phase. Journal of Cell Science 117:465-476.

Anderson, L. K., N. Salameh, H. W. Bass, L. C. Harper, W. Z. Cande, G. Weber, and S. M. Stack. 2004. Integrating genetic linkage maps with pachytene chromosome structure in maize. Genetics 166:1923-1933.

Marian, C. O., and H. W. Bass. 2005. The Terminal acidic SANT 1 (Tacs1) gene of maize is expressed in tissues containing meristems and encodes an acidic SANT domain similar to some chromatin-remodeling complex proteins. Biochemica Biophysica Acta—Gene Structure and Expression 1727:81-86.

Amarillo, F. Ina E., and H. W. Bass. 2007. A transgenomic cytogenetic sorghum (Sorghum propinquum) BAC FISH map of maize (Zea mays L.) pachytene chromosome 9, evidence for regions of genome hyperexpansion. Genetics 177:1509-1526.

Okagaki, R. J., M. S. Jacobs, A. O. Stec, R. G. Kynast, E. Buescher, H. W. Rines, M. I. Vales, O. Riera-Lizarazu, M. Schneerman, G. Doyle, K. L. Friedman, R. W. Staub, D. F. Weber, T. L. Kamps, I. F. E. Amarillo, C. D. Chase, H. W. Bass, and R. L. Phillips. 2008. Maize centromere mapping: a comparison of physical and genetic strategies. Journal of Heredity doi:10.1093/jhered/esm111 (on line ahead of print).

More publications

Graduate Students:

Brown, Amber
Figueroa, Debbie
Liu, Hong
Moore, Joel
Murphy, Sean

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