Using the Plant Heat Stress Response to Probe Genome-wide Regulatory Landscapes for Functional Relevance

利用植物热应激反应来探测全基因组调控景观的功能相关性

• 批准号: 1516701
• 负责人: Christine Queitsch
• 金额: $ 66.72万
• 依托单位: University of Washington
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2015
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2015-08-15 至 2018-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1516701&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Using; Plant; Heat; Stress; Response

This project will investigate the molecular mechanisms that allow all organisms to respond appropriately to stressful high temperature. Understanding the mechanistic underpinnings of the so-called heat stress response has become a particularly pressing issue for agriculture given rising global temperatures and droughts. Therefore, this research will focus on plants. In addition to providing important scientific insights and enabling future crop applications, this project offers training opportunities for graduate and postdoctoral fellows in plant research. It also provides educational opportunities for undergraduate students who belong to underrepresented groups to study and conduct experiments within the vibrant environment of a major research university. The heat stress response has been a model for gene regulation for almost a century because it is universally conserved, simple to control, and extremely well-studied. In preliminary studies in Arabidopsis thaliana, interrogation of the regulatory landscape during heat stress with DNaseI-seq revealed several unexpected findings, which this project will explore through two aims. First, additional DNaseI-seq experiments will be conducted to establish the generality of the earlier findings for physiologically relevant temperature conditions and to determine the connection between ambient temperature increases and acute heat stress. Second, chromosome conformation (Hi-C) analyses of normal and mutant plants will be used to determine how three-dimensional chromosome organization and specific histone variants contribute to the massive transcriptional changes observed in response to heat stress. The results are expected to lay the foundation for functional analysis of the regulatory elements responsible for thermotolerance in plants.

该项目将研究允许所有生物体对压力高温做出适当反应的分子机制。鉴于全球气温上升和干旱，了解所谓的热应激反应的机械基础已成为农业的一个特别紧迫的问题。因此，这项研究将集中在植物上。除了提供重要的科学见解和实现未来的作物应用外，该项目还为植物研究的研究生和博士后研究员提供培训机会。它还为属于代表性不足群体的本科生提供教育机会，在一所主要研究型大学充满活力的环境中学习和进行实验。热应激反应作为基因调控的一个模型已有近世纪的历史，因为它是普遍保守的，易于控制，并且研究非常充分。在拟南芥的初步研究中，用DNaseI-seq对热胁迫期间的调控景观进行了询问，揭示了一些意想不到的发现，该项目将通过两个目标进行探索。首先，将进行额外的DNaseI-seq实验，以建立生理相关温度条件的早期发现的一般性，并确定环境温度升高和急性热应激之间的联系。第二，正常和突变体植物的染色体构象（Hi-C）分析将用于确定三维染色体组织和特定组蛋白变体如何有助于响应热胁迫观察到的大规模转录变化。 研究结果为植物耐热性调控元件的功能分析奠定了基础。