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: 1557640
• 负责人: Andrew Doust
• 金额: $ 43.33万
• 依托单位: Oklahoma State University
• 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 2020-05-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1557640&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.

在农业出现之初，我们的祖先收获野生谷物，并开始年复一年地重新种植。这个过程很快导致选择留在植物上的谷物，而不是落在地上。现在，1万年后，这种在植物上停留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的变化是由正常（野生）过程中自然发生的突变引起的。然而，不同的谷粒脱落种子的过程是不同的。如野稻落种的细节，与野高粱或野黍不同。该项目将发现是什么自然突变导致了栽培谷物，以及水稻、高粱和小米的自然种子脱落过程是否在遗传上相似。因为在植物上保留种子是农业的基础，这是植物的一个明显的方面，可以吸引所有教育水平的学生。俄克拉荷马州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，将积极参与该项目所需的观察和数据收集。种子的脱落是通过一个特征性的薄弱区，即脱落区（AZ）发生的，在这个区域中，细胞和细胞壁的内容物被修改，以允许果实从母体植物上脱落。该项目将测试开发是否普遍保守，即，AZ是否是通过在不同时间或不同位置激活保守的发育程序产生的，或者发育是否通过使用新的基因组合产生新的结构（在这种情况下，AZ）。具体而言，重组近交系和野生种质将用于鉴定有助于模式物种绿色粟（狗尾草）中落粒的基因。这些研究将通过绿色小米与二穗短柄草和水稻的转录组学数据进行补充。这些调查将测试的假设，AZ发展的某些方面是共享的三个物种，但许多方面不同，因为AZ形式在每个不同的位置。然后，调查将扩展到许多其他草，其中一些与小米，水稻和短柄草相似，其中一些显示出独特的种子脱落模式。研究结果将确定在生态和经济关键途径中平行和趋同进化的程度。