Collaborative Research: Genetic Comparisons of Abscission Zones in Grasses

合作研究：草类脱落区的遗传比较

• 批准号: 1557633
• 负责人: Elizabeth Kellogg
• 金额: $ 34.97万
• 依托单位: Donald Danforth Plant Science Center
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2016
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2016-06-15 至 2019-05-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1557633&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; Genetic; Comparisons; Abscission

At the dawn of agriculture, our ancestors harvested wild grains and began replanting them year after year. This process rapidly led to selection for grains that stayed on the plant, instead of falling on the ground. Now, 10,000 years later, this capacity to stay on the plant until harvest has obvious economic importance. The change from wild grains that fall and cultivated ones that do not is caused by naturally occurring mutations in a normal (that is wild) process. However, the process of shedding seeds occurs differently in different grains. For example, the details of dropping seeds in wild rice are different from those in wild sorghum or wild millet. This project will discover what natural mutations led to the cultivated grains, and whether the natural process of shedding seeds in rice, sorghum, and millet is genetically similar. Because retaining seeds on the plant is the very basis of agriculture, it is an obvious aspect of plants that can engage students at all education levels. Master teachers and undergraduate education majors at Oklahoma State University, as well as undergraduate science majors and local high school students, will participate actively in the observations and data collection required for the project.Shedding of seeds occurs via a characteristic zone of weakness, the abscission zone (AZ), in which the contents of cells and cell walls are modified to allow a fruit to fall off the parent plant. This project will test whether development is generally conservative, i.e., whether the AZ is produced by activating a conserved developmental program at different times or in different locations, or whether development produces novel structures (in this case, the AZ) by using novel gene combinations. Specifically, recombinant inbred lines and wild accessions will be used to identify genes that contribute to shattering in the model species green millet (Setaria viridis). These studies will be complemented by transcriptomic data on green millet in comparison to Brachypodium distachyon and rice. These investigations will test the hypothesis that some aspects of AZ development are shared among the three species but that many aspects differ because the AZ forms in a different position in each. The investigation will then be expanded to many other grasses, some of which are similar to millet, rice and Brachypodium, and some of which show distinct patterns of seed shedding. The results will define the extent of parallel and convergent evolution in an ecologically and economically critical pathway.

在农业出现的初期，我们的祖先收获了野生谷物，并开始年复一年地重新种植它们。这个过程迅速导致选择留在植物上的谷物，而不是落在地上。现在，一万年过去了，这种留在植物上直到收获的能力具有明显的经济重要性。野生谷物和栽培谷物之间的变化是由正常（即野生）过程中自然发生的突变引起的。然而，在不同的谷物中，脱粒的过程是不同的。例如，野生水稻的落籽细节与野生高粱或野生谷子不同。该项目将发现是什么自然突变导致了种植谷物，以及水稻、高粱和小米的种子脱落的自然过程在基因上是否相似。因为将种子保留在植物上是农业的基础，这是植物的一个明显方面，可以吸引所有教育水平的学生。俄克拉荷马州立大学的硕士教师和本科教育专业的学生，以及本科理科专业的学生和当地的高中生，将积极参与项目所需的观察和数据收集。种子的脱落发生在一个典型的弱区，即脱落区（脱落区），在这里，细胞和细胞壁的内容物被修改，使果实从亲本植物上脱落。该项目将测试发育是否普遍保守，即，是否通过在不同时间或不同位置激活保守的发育程序来产生AZ，或者是否通过使用新的基因组合来产生新的结构（在这种情况下，是AZ）。具体而言，重组自交系和野生材料将用于鉴定模式种绿谷子（Setaria viridis）中导致碎裂的基因。这些研究将通过绿谷子与短柄草和水稻的转录组学数据进行比较。这些研究将验证一种假设，即在三个物种中，AZ发育的某些方面是共同的，但由于AZ在每个物种中形成的位置不同，许多方面存在差异。然后，调查将扩展到许多其他禾本科植物，其中一些类似于小米、水稻和短柄草，其中一些显示出独特的种子脱落模式。研究结果将确定生态和经济关键路径中平行和趋同进化的程度。