Genomweite Assoziationsstudie für Trockentoleranz in Arabidopsis thaliana Keimlingen

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Drought is a major abiotic stress affecting plants. On a global scale, water availability affects yield severely, a problem that will likely be exacerbated by climate change. It is thus of fundamental importance to generate crop plants that utilize water more efficiently and show greater resistance to drought. Although some progress in generating drought resistant plants has been made using conventional breeding or genetic engineering, our understanding of the molecular mechanisms underlying drought resistance in nature is still very poor. One approach to identify new genes or even networks of genes contributing to drought tolerance in natural accessions is genome-wide association studies (GWAS). Arabidopsis thaliana is the ideal tool for this kind of study, as large collections of genotyped accessions (natural inbred lines) already exist. The availability of inbred lines has the additional benefit that a genotyped line can be used for phenotypic analysis multiple times, either to achieve replication or to study genotype-environment interactions. Our objective here is to carry out GWAS for drought tolerance in seedlings in order to identify the major determinants of natural variation for this trait in A. thaliana. This analysis will lead to the identification of many putative new components of the signalling network that are relevant in natural environments. These components will be further validated by the combinatorial use of crossings and transgenic approaches. The end-result will be better understanding of the molecular network that contributes to drought tolerance in Arabidopsis thaliana and in plants in general.