Ionome to the Genome: Mapping the Gene Networks Controlling Nutrient Content in Rice Grain

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PI: David Salt (Purdue University)CoPIs: Mary Lou Guerinot (Dartmouth University; subawardee), and Shannon Pinson (Texas A&M University; subawardee)Senior Personnel: Lee Tarpley (Texas A&M University) and Min Zhang (Purdue University)Mineral nutrients such as calcium, iron and zinc play important roles in human health. The development of rice varieties that produce grain with increased mineral nutrient contents and decreased levels of various toxic trace minerals could have a significant positive impact on human health, as food-based solutions to this hidden hunger offer sustainable solutions to these problems of malnutrition. This project will leverage work done in model systems and use high throughput elemental analysis, genomics, rice breeding and bioinformatics to uncover the genes and gene networks that regulate the mineral composition of rice grain. As a starting point, the project will take advantage of and explore the natural variation that exists in rice grain mineral content in the many thousands of rice varieties grown throughout the world. The rice grain ionomic data, DNA microarray genotyping, transcript profiling and mapping data, and QTL information generated will be made available via the web-based Purdue Ionomics Information Management System (PiiMS) (www.purdue.edu/dp/ionomics/), Gramene (http://www.gramene.org/) and Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/geo/). The broader impacts of this project will include contributing to increasing bio-available mineral nutrients in plants, and to solving important problems in human health. If successful, nutrient-rich seed should also lead to agronomic benefits such as increased seedling vigor, resistance to disease and other stresses, and increased crop yields. Furthermore, understanding the pathways by which toxic metals accumulate in plants will enable the development of crops to exclude toxic metals and create healthier food sources, or to extract toxic metals from the soil as a strategy to clean up polluted lands and water. Educational outreach will include training of postdoctoral fellows, undergraduates and graduate students in the field of ionomics. Public outreach efforts will also include contributions to science museums through a genomics exhibit which is currently under development (www.genomicsexplorer.com).