ECA-PGR: Identifying Host Factors that Influence the Association of Tall Fescue (Festuca arundinacea) with beneficial Epichloe endophytes

满足21世纪对作物和农业增产的需求将需要创新和变革性的方法。利用有益微生物造福农业是一个具有巨大潜力的领域。虽然有些微生物会导致疾病，但许多其他微生物是无害的，有些甚至有益于植物。该项目研究了这样一种有益的伙伴关系，以确定植物和微生物如何共同改善植物健康。高羊茅是一种重要的牲畜草，可以承受更大的压力（高温，干旱等）。当一种特殊的真菌在里面生长时，尽管某些类型的真菌也会产生一种毒素，可以使牲畜中毒。研究人员将分析数千种高羊茅植物，以找到影响这些毒素产生的植物基因，从而了解植物如何影响它们的微生物伙伴。研究新感染的高羊茅幼苗发生了什么变化，将有助于更好地了解这种伙伴关系是如何建立的。在热胁迫下比较有真菌和没有真菌的植物将有助于确定植物和真菌如何共同抵抗压力。该项目将协助初中和高中教师制定与这些主题有关的实践教学项目，以便他们在自己的课堂上实施。总之，这些研究将增加对植物-微生物伙伴关系如何工作以及如何利用它们来提高农业生产和可持续性的理解。尽管已知植物-微生物相互作用非常有益，但其中大多数都知之甚少，无法充分利用，而且它们背后的机制在很大程度上是未知的。该项目将通过识别影响高羊茅（高羊茅）（一种经济上重要的牧草）与其专性真菌内生菌之间有益共生的基因和途径来解决这些知识差距。具体而言，该项目将（1）创建一个大型的多亲本高羊茅作图群体，并确定控制经济相关真菌防御化合物生产的植物基因，（2）分析新感染的高羊茅幼苗的转录组反应，以确定建立成功的宿主-内生菌伙伴关系的途径，和（3）鉴定有和没有内生菌的植物对热胁迫的转录组学响应，以鉴定在内生菌存在下负责植物获得增强的胁迫抗性的基因和转录模块。这些结果将确定参与重要植物-真菌共生的关键基因，并将作为更普遍的有益植物-微生物相互作用的模型。这些结果将直接应用于美国饲料工业，并将更广泛地为农业植物-微生物相互作用的研究提供信息。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Meeting the demand for increased crop and agriculture production in the 21st century will require innovative and transformative approaches. One area with great potential for benefitting agriculture is harnessing beneficial microbes for agriculture. Although some microbes cause disease, many others are harmless and some even benefit the plant. This project studies one such beneficial partnership to determine how the plant and microbe work together to improve plant health. Tall fescue, an important grass for livestock, can withstand much greater stress (heat, drought, etc.) when a specific fungus grows inside it, although some types of the fungus also produce a toxin that can sicken livestock. Thousands of tall fescue plants will be analyzed to find the plant genes that influence the production of these toxins to understand how plants can influence their microbe partners. Studying what changes occur in newly infected tall fescue seedlings will lead to a better understanding of how this partnership is established. Comparing plants with and without the fungus under heat stress will help determine how both plant and fungus work together to withstand the stress. The project will assist middle- and high-school teachers in developing hands-on teaching projects related to these topics that they can implement in their own classrooms. Together, these studies will increase understanding of how plant-microbe partnerships work and how to use them to improve agricultural production and sustainability.Even though highly beneficial plant-microbe interactions are known, most of them are too poorly understood to exploit fully, and the mechanisms behind them are largely unknown. This project will address these knowledge gaps by identifying genes and pathways that influence the beneficial symbiosis between tall fescue (Festuca arundinacea), an economically important forage grass, and its obligate fungal endophytes. Specifically, this project will (1) create a large, multiparental mapping population of tall fescue and identify the plant genes that control the production of economically relevant fungal defense compounds, (2) profile the transcriptomic response of newly infected tall fescue seedlings to identify the pathways involved in establishing a successful host-endophyte partnership, and (3) identify the plant transcriptomic response to heat stress with and without endophytes to identify the genes and transcriptional modules responsible for the plant achieving enhanced stress resistance in the presence of the endophyte. These results will identify the key genes involved in an important plant-fungus symbiosis and will serve as a model for beneficial plant-microbe interactions more generally. These results will have direct application to the US forage industry, and will more broadly inform investigations into agricultural plant-microbe interactions in general.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.