EAPSI: From Spores to Seeds: A Collaborative Investigation of Plant Genetics

某些基因对生物体的正常生长和发育至关重要。因此，这些基因的变化可能会对物种群体的整体进化产生重大影响。MADS-box基因就是这样一个基因家族，它控制着植物相当大一部分的发育，并被发现是植物进化的主要变化的基础。通过这项奖学金，获奖者将与澳大利亚新南威尔士州西悉尼大学著名的植物生物学家陈中华博士合作，研究蕨类植物与开花植物中的MADS-box基因，开花植物包括许多经过充分研究的作物。这项研究将为了解祖先MADS-box基因以及这组基因在植物进化史上发生的变化提供新的见解。近30年来，MADS-box基因家族的研究一直是植物进化研究的关键方面，因为它们在开花植物的发育和大规模多样化中发挥着重要作用。虽然基因组学时代使得人们能够在各种各样的植物中快速鉴定出可能的MADS-box基因，但除了少数模式植物外，这些基因的验证、定位和活性模式通常都是缺乏的。此外，种子植物的姐妹群蕨类植物中缺乏已公布的参考基因组，这给我们对所有陆地植物的MADS盒进化的理解留下了一个惊人的空白。通过与陈中华博士的合作，获奖者将使用功能遗传学来验证、定位和量化模式蕨类植物Ceratopteris richardii整个生命周期中可能的MADS-box基因，这是首次对非种子植物进行此类研究。这些结果将补充获奖者广泛的基因组和转录组分析，并阐明MADS-box基因家族在蕨类植物、种子植物和所有陆地植物中的进化。该奖项由东亚和太平洋夏季研究所计划支持一名美国研究生的夏季研究，由NSF和澳大利亚科学院联合资助。

Certain genes are critical for the proper growth and development of organisms. As such, changes in these genes can have large effects on the overall evolution of groups of species. The MADS-box genes are one such family of genes, which control a sizeable portion of plant development and have been found to underlie major changes in plant evolution. Through this fellowship, the awardee will work with the distinguished plant biologist Dr. Zhong-Hua Chen at Western Sydney University in New South Wales, Australia to study the MADS-box genes in ferns compared to flowering plants, which include many well-studied crops. This study will provide new insights into the ancestral MADS-box genes and the changes that have occurred in this group of genes throughout the evolutionary history of plants.Investigations of the MADS-box gene family have been a key facet of plant evolution research for nearly three decades due to their major role in development and putative role in the massive diversification of flowering plants. While the genomics era has allowed the rapid identification of putative MADS-box genes in a wide diversity of plant species, the verification, localization, and activity patterns of these genes are generally lacking in all but a few model flowering plants. In addition, the absence of a published reference genome in ferns, sister group to seed plants, has left an egregious gap in our understanding of MADS-box evolution across all of land plants. By collaborating with Dr. Zhong-Hua Chen, the awardee will use functional genetics to verify, localize, and quantify the putative MADS-box genes throughout the life cycle of the model fern, Ceratopteris richardii, the first study of this kind for a non-seed plant. These results will complement the awardee's broad genomic and transcriptomic analyses and elucidate the evolution of the MADS-box gene family across ferns, seed plants, and all of land plants.This award, under the East Asia and Pacific Summer Institutes program, supports summer research by a US graduate student and is jointly funded by NSF and the Australian Academy of Science.