A novel genome-wide approach to understand the genetic basis for morphological diversification of leaves

一种新的全基因组方法来了解叶子形态多样化的遗传基础

• 批准号: BB/H011455/2
• 负责人: Miltos Tsiantis
• 金额: $ 3.56万
• 依托单位: Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2013
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2013 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=BB%2FH011455%2F2
• 关键词: novel; genome; wide; approach; understand

A key problem in biology is to understand how different organisms come to have different forms. In plants, this variation in form is obvious in the many different leaf shapes one sees during a walk in the park. Leaves are also interesting to study because they play a key role in the food chain being the main photosynthetic organs of land plants and thus responsible for CO2 fixation in terrestrial ecosystems. For these reasons, understanding how diversity in leaf form is generated is of considerable interest to scientists. To study this problem we work with hairy bittercress (Cardamine hirsuta), which is a plant that has leaves fully subdivided into smaller leaflets. The presence of leaflets makes this plant very different to its close relative thale cress (Arabidopsis thaliana), which has entire, undivided leaves. We already know a lot about how an entire leaf shape is produced in thale cress because it is easy to grow and do experiments with. Hairy bittercress is also very easy to work with in the lab, so we use it to understand how leaflets are produced. We now want to understand how the genetic make up of the hairy bittercress differs to that of the thale cress resulting in leaflets being produced in only the former species . Specifically we will test whether hairy bittercress leaves produce leaflets because certain genes in this plant carry different information to thale cress genes. To achieve this we will divide the hairy bittercress genome into many small pieces and introduce each piece of this genome into the thale cress. The few thale cress plants that receive a 'leaflet producing' part of the hairy bittercress genome should now produce leaves that resemble the divided leaves of hairy bittercress. This approach will allow us to isolate 'leaflet producing' genes and find out whether the 'leaflet producing information' resides in the regulatory sequences that control when, where and how much a gene is expressed, or in the protein-coding sequences that determine the biochemical activity of a gene product. Isolation of such 'leaflet producing genes' will form the basis for future research where we will reduce or increase their activity within bitter cress to test to what degree leaflet production is sensitive to alterations of their activity.

生物学的一个关键问题是了解不同的生物体是如何形成不同的形态的。在植物中，这种形式的变化很明显，在公园散步时，你会看到许多不同的叶子形状。研究叶片也很有趣，因为它们在食物链中扮演着关键角色，是陆地植物的主要光合器官，因此在陆地生态系统中负责二氧化碳的固定。由于这些原因，了解叶片形态的多样性是如何产生的对科学家来说是相当感兴趣的。为了研究这个问题，我们研究了多毛苦菜（Cardamine hirsuta），这是一种叶子完全细分为更小的小叶的植物。小叶的存在使这种植物与它的近亲拟南芥（拟南芥）非常不同，拟南芥有完整的、不分裂的叶子。我们已经知道了很多关于整个叶片形状是如何在芥蓝中产生的，因为它很容易种植和做实验。毛苦菜在实验室里也很容易操作，所以我们用它来了解小叶是如何产生的。我们现在想了解毛苦菜的基因组成与泰勒斯的基因组成是如何不同的，导致只有前一个物种才产生小叶。具体来说，我们将测试多毛苦菜叶子是否产生小叶，因为这种植物的某些基因携带不同的信息与芥蓝基因。为了实现这一目标，我们将把毛苦菜基因组分成许多小块，并将每个基因组片段引入到长尾菜中。少数接受毛苦菜基因组“产生小叶”部分的芥蓝植物现在应该长出与毛苦菜分裂的叶子相似的叶子。这种方法将使我们能够分离“产生小叶”的基因，并找出“产生信息的小叶”是否存在于控制基因表达的时间、地点和数量的调控序列中，还是存在于决定基因产物生化活性的蛋白质编码序列中。这种“小叶产生基因”的分离将为未来的研究奠定基础，我们将在苦菜中减少或增加它们的活性，以测试小叶产生对其活性变化的敏感程度。