RevGenUK the next generation: establishing a TILLING boutique for a UK-based reverse genetics community resource

RevGenUK 下一代：为英国反向遗传学社区资源建立 TILLING 精品店

• 批准号: BB/I026030/1
• 负责人: Mario Caccamo
• 金额: $ 23.93万
• 依托单位: Earlham Institute
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2012
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2012 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=BB%2FI026030%2F1
• 关键词: RevGenUK; next; generation; establishing; TILLING

In an ever changing climate, we are constantly trying to improve crops to achieve more sustainable agricultural practices. To do this, we need to understand in great detail how plants grow and work. Genetics is a powerful tool for helping us to obtain such an understanding. Using it we are able to analyse the whole genetic make-up (the genome) of plants to discover all the genes required for them to develop and operate correctly. We can use this information to study variants that have a defect in a particular gene (or genes) in which we are interested. This helps us to understand how the gene works when it is operating normally and its role in the plant. Many species of plant have had their whole genome sequenced already, but there are still thousands of their genes whose role in the plant is not understood. To obtain plants that bear a defective gene we can treat seeds with a chemical or radiation that damages the DNA coding for that gene. The offspring from these treated seeds will bear a large number of defects in their genomes. By producing a large population of offspring we can make every gene in the genome bear a defect. The problem then is to find the plant in the population that has a defect in the gene in which you are interested. We have developed methods that can sort out defective genes of interest and find the plants that contain them, so we can find out the role of the gene. This whole process is known as reverse genetics. No one chemical or physical means can induce all the defects we need to study particular genes so we need to use several different methods. In a previous project we set up a resource for the plant science research community so that they can discover the function of their particular genes of interest. We did this for legumes and brassicas (treated with chemicals) that contain plants bearing different forms of defective genes, but now we would like to do it for major UK cereal crops to help both scientists and plant breeders. We have developed special methods based on high throughput machines (sequencers) that can detect the defects when compared to the normal gene. Now we wish to develop methods that will do this in a more efficient and cost-effective manner. Scientists can then send us information about the gene of interest, for example, a gene from oats or barley, and we can then look for defects in their specific gene in our populations of thousands of plants. We then send them seeds from the plant that they can grow to study the action of the defective gene in that plant. All the information that we gather about our plants and their thousand upon thousands of genes will be stored in a computer database that we have constructed especially for this project, although it will be written in such a way that others can use it as well. It will also be available to use on the worldwide web so that a scientist anywhere in the UK or the World can come and browse to see if the database contains information about their gene of interest. The reason for wanting to do this is to improve the ability of crop plants to grow in different environments, especially adverse ones, to improve the quality of our food, and to help the farmer work in a sustainable way using less added fertiliser and fewer herbicides and pesticides.

在不断变化的气候中，我们不断努力改良作物，以实现更可持续的农业实践。为此，我们需要详细了解植物如何生长和工作。遗传学是帮助我们获得这种理解的强大工具。使用它，我们能够分析植物的整个遗传组成（基因组），以发现它们正确发育和运作所需的所有基因。我们可以利用这些信息来研究我们感兴趣的特定基因（或多个基因）存在缺陷的变异体。这有助于我们了解该基因在正常运行时如何发挥作用以及它在植物中的作用。许多植物物种的全基因组已经测序，但仍有数千个基因在植物中的作用尚不清楚。为了获得带有缺陷基因的植物，我们可以用化学物质或辐射处理种子，从而破坏该基因的 DNA 编码。这些经过处理的种子的后代将在其基因组中携带大量缺陷。通过产生大量后代，我们可以使基因组中的每个基因都带有缺陷。接下来的问题是在群体中找到您感兴趣的基因有缺陷的植物。我们开发了一些方法，可以筛选出感兴趣的缺陷基因并找到含有它们的植物，这样我们就可以找出该基因的作用。这整个过程被称为反向遗传学。没有一种化学或物理手段可以诱发我们研究特定基因所需的所有缺陷，因此我们需要使用几种不同的方法。在之前的项目中，我们为植物科学研究界建立了一个资源，以便他们能够发现他们感兴趣的特定基因的功能。我们对含有不同形式缺陷基因的豆类和芸苔属植物（经过化学品处理）进行了这项研究，但现在我们希望对英国主要谷类作物进行这项研究，以帮助科学家和植物育种者。我们开发了基于高通量机器（测序仪）的特殊方法，可以检测与正常基因相比的缺陷。现在我们希望开发出能够以更高效、更具成本效益的方式做到这一点的方法。然后，科学家可以向我们发送有关感兴趣基因的信息，例如来自燕麦或大麦的基因，然后我们可以在数千种植物种群中寻找其特定基因的缺陷。然后，我们将植物的种子发送给他们，让他们种植，以研究该植物中缺陷基因的作用。我们收集的有关植物及其成千上万个基因的所有信息都将存储在我们专门为该项目构建的计算机数据库中，尽管该数据库将以其他人也可以使用的方式编写。它还可以在万维网上使用，以便英国或世界任何地方的科学家都可以来浏览该数据库是否包含有关他们感兴趣的基因的信息。想要这样做的原因是提高农作物在不同环境，特别是恶劣环境中生长的能力，提高我们的食物质量，并帮助农民以可持续的方式工作，使用更少的化肥和除草剂和杀虫剂。