A cell atlas of temperature-dependent gene activities in the flower

花中温度依赖性基因活性的细胞图谱

• 批准号: 458750707
• 负责人: Professorin Dr. Kerstin Kaufmann
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Lehrstuhl für Pflanzliche Zell- und Molekularbiologie
• 依托单位国家: 德国
• 项目类别: Research Grants
• 财政年份: 2021
• 资助国家: 德国
• 起止时间: 2020-12-31 至 2022-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/458750707?language=en
• 关键词: cell; atlas; temperature; dependent; gene

Plants are exposed to an environment that is inherently heterogeneous depending on the local habitat. Therefore, plants have evolved intricate adaptive mechanisms, and different organs and cell types vary in their environmental response programs. An excellent example for this is the environmental robustness of flower development, which is a key factor in determining the habitat range of plants. Once the decision to bloom has been made, floral organ development need to be robustly maintained irrespective of the local environment. However, it is still largely unknown how gene activity in different cell types and individual cells is controlled by environmental factors such as temperature.Novel single-cell omics technologies have started to unravel the intrinsic cellular heterogeneity in multicellular organisms. However, plant cells pose specific challenges to single cell omics, because the isolation of single cells is aggravated by the presence of a cell wall. We have established single nucleus RNA-seq in plants, which allows us to ‘freeze’ the native transcript states in nuclei and thereby overcomes the limitation of commonly used protoplasting techniques that result in the activation of many stress-related genes. Thus, this method allows us to study environmental responses in transcriptional activity. This project aims at using our snRNA-seq method to generate a cellular atlas of transcriptional changes associated with temperature adaptation in the flower. The goal is to generate temperature-dependent cell type atlases of gene activity in three species: the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana, its close relative Cardamine hirsuta and the crop plant species Solanum lycopersicum. In addition, we make use of the rich knowledge of natural variation within Arabidopsis by interrogating different ecotypes that reflect adaptations to different local environments within the large global habitat range of this species. By combining information on cell-type specific differences in gene activities with information on natural genetic variation, we can identify candidate genes involved in mediating temperature robustness of flower development. This project will provide an innovative proof-of-concept for using single cell omics technologies to understand cell-type specificity of environmental responses in plants, allowing these methods to be applied to other environmental conditions and biological questions in the future.

植物暴露于一个环境，这是固有的异质性取决于当地的栖息地。因此，植物进化出了复杂的适应机制，不同的器官和细胞类型在其环境响应程序中有所不同。一个很好的例子是花发育的环境稳健性，这是决定植物栖息地范围的关键因素。一旦决定开花，无论当地环境如何，花器官的发育都需要得到有力的维持。然而，不同细胞类型和单个细胞中的基因活性如何受到环境因素（如温度）的控制仍是未知之数。新的单细胞组学技术已开始揭示多细胞生物中内在的细胞异质性。然而，植物细胞对单细胞组学提出了特定的挑战，因为细胞壁的存在加剧了单细胞的分离。我们已经在植物中建立了单核RNA-seq，这使我们能够“冻结”细胞核中的天然转录状态，从而克服了导致许多胁迫相关基因激活的常用原生质体技术的局限性。因此，这种方法使我们能够研究转录活性的环境响应。该项目旨在使用我们的snRNA-seq方法来生成与花中温度适应相关的转录变化的细胞图谱。我们的目标是在三个物种中产生温度依赖性细胞类型的基因活性图谱：模式植物拟南芥，其近亲碎米荠和作物物种番茄。此外，我们利用丰富的知识，自然变异内拟南芥通过询问不同的生态型，反映适应不同的当地环境内的大的全球栖息地范围内的这个物种。通过将基因活性的细胞类型特异性差异信息与自然遗传变异信息相结合，我们可以识别参与介导花发育温度稳健性的候选基因。该项目将为使用单细胞组学技术了解植物环境反应的细胞类型特异性提供创新的概念验证，使这些方法在未来应用于其他环境条件和生物学问题。