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

该项目将研究使所有生物对高温应激作出适当反应的分子机制。鉴于全球气温上升和干旱，了解所谓热应激反应的机制基础已成为农业的一个特别紧迫的问题。因此，本研究将以植物为研究对象。除了提供重要的科学见解和实现未来作物应用之外，该项目还为植物研究的研究生和博士后提供培训机会。它还为属于代表性不足群体的本科生提供教育机会，让他们在一个主要研究型大学充满活力的环境中学习和进行实验。近一个世纪以来，热应激反应一直是基因调控的一个模型，因为它普遍保守，易于控制，而且研究得非常充分。在对拟南芥（Arabidopsis thaliana）的初步研究中，利用dna - ei -seq对热胁迫下的调控景观进行了调查，揭示了一些意想不到的发现，本项目将通过两个目标来探索这些发现。首先，将进行额外的dna测序实验，以确定生理相关温度条件下早期发现的普遍性，并确定环境温度升高与急性热应激之间的联系。其次，正常和突变植物的染色体构象（Hi-C）分析将用于确定三维染色体组织和特定组蛋白变异如何促进热胁迫下观察到的大量转录变化。研究结果有望为植物耐热性调控元件的功能分析奠定基础。

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.