BTT EAGER: Harnessing the power of cellular memory to enhance the breeding potential of crops

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Significant efforts are dedicated to identifying causal links between genetic and trait variation for crop improvement. Missing from these efforts is the pursuit of epigenetic variation, whereby stably inherited traits arise in the absence of genetic changes. It was recently discovered that clonal propagation of plants can induce epigenetic variation that is stably inherited in clonally regenerated plants. The goal of this project is to use this newly developed approach that couples a variety of environmental stresses with traditional plant clonal propagation techniques to produce maize plants with enhanced stress resistance. This project is a joint collaboration between the Schmitz Laboratory at the University of Georgia and the Gutierrez-Marcos Laboratory at the University of Warwick in the United Kingdom and is supported as part of the Breakthrough Technologies competition, which is jointly funded by the National Science Foundation and the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council. The ability to uncover stress-responsive variation using this novel, clonal plant propagation strategy could lead to a rapid improvement of stress resilient maize varieties. In addition to the agricultural impact, this project will fund graduate student training in experimental and computational biology. The graduate students will participate in mentoring high-school summer intern students from the Young Dawgs program sponsored by the University of Georgia. These students will focus on biological computer programming. Additionally, hands-on workshops for experimental biology will be hosted at the University of Warwick through the Nuffield Foundation Research Program to inspire students and teachers to explore the area of plant biotechnology. This project aims to create Zea mays plants with enhanced responses to abiotic and biotic stresses. To accomplish this goal, a novel method to clonally regenerate maize plants in concert with different stress conditions to induce novel yet heritable epigenetic variation will be used. Transcriptome analyses will be performed to assess the functional significance of the stress-induced epigenetic variation a transcriptome analysis on regenerated plants. For the induced epigenetic variation to be relevant it must be stable over generations. Therefore, the stability of induced epigenetic variation by studying the DNA methylome and transcriptome of progeny plants derived from clonal regenerants will be assessed. In parallel, phenotypic characterization of the regenerant plants and their progeny in comparison to controls will be carried out to determine if enhanced responses to stress exist. These results will potentially lead to novel methodologies for inducing novel yet stable epigenetic variation, thus enabling innovative avenues for trait improvement in maize and possibly other crop species.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.