In Tripsacum dactyloides, an ancestor of modem maize, genes that control floral development have not been described. A research program to identify and analyze the genes that control and regulate floral development in Tripsacum, has been undertaken through the bioinformatics analysis of Tripsacum cDNA libraries and suppression subtractive EST libraries of stage- and developmentally- specific Tripsacum floral tissue. Comparative analysis of nucleotide sequence data has revealed numerous genes previously described within other floral genomes such as Oryza sativa (rice), Zea mays (maize), Arabidopsis thaliana (thale cress), Triticum spp. (wheat) and Rosa rosesum (rose) well as unique gene sequences. Attempts have been made to characterize the unique genes through analysis of conserved domain sequence segments. / Department of Biology