Deciphering the translational landscape of Arabidopsis and maize meiocytes

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Meiosis is of central importance for the life cycle of sexually reproducing organisms, such as the majority of flowering plants. Moreover, meiosis is key to biodiversity and with that also for plant breeding. Recent data from us and others strongly suggest that meiosis in plants, similar to meiosis in yeast, relies on pervasive translational control. However, since meiocytes are difficult to isolate, especially from Arabidopsis, in which our molecular understanding of plant meiosis is most advanced, very little is known about meiotic gene regulation through translation. Based on current advances in our team, we can now overcome these technical limitations and will here obtain the translatome of the eudicotyledonous species Arabidopsis thaliana. In an interspecies approach, we will then identify the translatome of meiocytes in maize, a monocotyledonous species and one of the most important crops. The maize work is made possible through substantial knowledge on maize and a unique set up in our department to collect single cells. The large size of maize meiocytes also allows us to obtain the translatome of female and male meiocytes. Thus, we can compare not only conserved regulatory mechanisms within the two main lineages among flowering plants but also between sexes. Furthermore, comparing the regulation of meiosis in yeast with the obtained plant translatomes will allow us to reveal general principles and evolutionary themes in meiotic control in eukaryotes. Highly translated and very poorly translated transcripts will then be analyzed in detail for their particular compositions of proteins that bind to them and control their translation. In parallel, we will unravel the ribonucleo-protein composition of three genes in Arabidopsis and maize for which we have obtained evidence for translational regulation in our preparatory work. With this pioneering project we want reach a new level of our understanding of gene regulation in meiosis. Thereby, we will create a long-term research base for our newly established department at the University of Hamburg that utilizes the existing expertise on maize as well as our previous experience and preparatory work in Arabidopsis.