CAREER: Mitochondrial Genome Evolution and Land Plant Phylogeny

丘陵植物是地球上的初级生产者，直接和间接地供应我们的食物，创造我们生活的栖息地，并为日常生活提供许多其他材料。然而，我们对植物进化的了解仍然很少。作物的改良和对环境中植物理论的理解在一定程度上取决于我们对植物进化的知识。分子生物学、系统发育学和计算机科学的革命使历史上第一次有可能准确地重建植物的系统发育。在马萨诸塞大学阿默斯特分校的邱银龙博士的这个项目中，将使用三种不同的方法来理解陆地植物进化的有机和分子方面。首先，将对所有三种植物基因组(核、叶绿体、线粒体)的几个基因进行测序，并结合公共领域提供的数据进行分析，以重建多基因陆地植物的系统发育。其次，将独立研究线粒体基因组的几个基因组结构特征，如内含子获取、内含子转座和基因簇分解，以评估基于序列的系统发育的关键部分，同时了解早期陆地植物线粒体基因组的进化。最后，将对一些线粒体基因组进行测序，以深入了解早期陆地植物辐射期间线粒体基因组的进化，并提供更多的基因组结构特征，用于评估通过基因序列分析确定的早期陆地植物主要谱系：苔类、苔类、角藻和维管植物之间的关系的稳健性。植物科学正处于一个新时代的黎明。经过二十年来在形态、系统学、遗传学、生理学和生态学方面的不同发展，这些分支学科开始整合为一门新的综合植物生物学。因此，该项目还旨在实现两个教育目标。一个是在新出现的进化基因组学领域培训几名研究生和博士后助理。它们将填补传统分类学和现代基因组学之间的知识鸿沟，这一鸿沟正在许多生物学部门发展。另一个是开设植物进化、进化基因组学和系统遗传学三门课程，这些都是最近新信息爆炸式增长的新兴领域。这些课程将为本科生和研究生教育提供服务。总而言之，这个项目中概述的五条工作路线可能会极大地增强我们对陆地植物进化的了解。

0093012Qiu Plants are primary producers on the earth, supplying our food directly and indirectly, creating the habitat we live in, and providing many other materials for everyday life. However, our knowledge of plant evolution remains scanty. Improvement of crops and understanding theroles of plants in our environment partially hinge on our knowledge of plant evolution. Revolutions in molecular biology, phylogenetics, and computer science have made it possible for the first time in history to reconstruct accurately the phylogeny of plants. In this project by Dr. Yin-Long Qiu at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, three different approaches will be employed to understand both organismal and molecular aspects of land plant evolution. First, several genes from all three plant genomes (nucleus, chloroplast, mitochondrion) will be sequenced and analyzed in combination with the data available from the public domain to reconstruct a multigene land plant phylogeny. Second, several genomic structural features from the mitochondrial genome, such as intron acquisition, intron transposition, and gene cluster disintegration, will be investigated independently to evaluate critical parts of the sequence-based phylogeny and at the same to understand mitochondrial genome evolution in early land plants. Last, a few mitochondrial genomes will be sequenced to gain an in-depth look at mitochondrial genome evolution during early land plant radiation and to provide more genomic structural characters for assessing robustness of the relationships resolved through gene sequence analyses among major lineages of early land plants: liverworts, mosses, hornworts, and vascular plants. Plant science is at the dawn of a new era. After two decades of separate development along distinst lines of morphology, systematics, genetics, physiology, and ecology, these sub-disciplines begin to integrate into a new comprehensive plant biology. Thus, this project also aims to reach two educational goals. One is to train several graduate students and postdoctoral associates in the newly emerging field of evolutionary genomics. They will fill in a knowledge rift between traditional systematics and modern genomics that is developing in many biology departments. The other is to develop three courses, Plant Evolution, Evolutionary Genomics, and Phylogenetics, which are emerging fields with a recent explosion of new information. These courses will serve the function for both undergraduate and graduate education. In summary, the five lines of work outlined in this project are likely to enhance significantly our knowledge of land plant evolution.