The Generation Gap - Mechanisms of maternal control on grain

代沟——母亲对粮食的控制机制

• 批准号: BB/W003074/1
• 负责人: Sarah McKim
• 金额: $ 74.99万
• 依托单位: University of Dundee
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2022 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=BB%2FW003074%2F1
• 关键词: Generation; Gap; Mechanisms; maternal; control

Understanding grain production in cereals is vital to safeguard food security in our changing world. Barley is a widely grown global cereal of vast economic importance to our country, and a powerful experimental system to identify and characterise processes that influence grain yield and quality. We recently revealed the importance of two master regulatory factors in barley which alter the balance between growth and survival of protective and nutritive maternal tissues versus the starchy, calorie-rich filial tissues filling the grain. We hypothesise that shifting this balance away from maternal tissues by limiting their size and promoting their elimination, provides the nutrients and space needed to increase grain size and weight. We speculate that the regulation of this balance may differ between wild and cultivated barleys, potentially explaining improved grain of cultivated barley. We predict that this process works by controlling gene expression and signalling across grain tissues, but the exact mechanisms remain unclear. Part of the reason for this knowledge gap is that testing our predictions is tricky: grain is a mix of these tissues and regulatory factors act both early and late, complicating and confounding accurate assessments of tissue and time-specific events and their effects on grain. We propose to surmount these challenges by applying two leading-edge technologies in barley. First, we will use single cell RNA sequencing to measure gene expression within individual cells followed by computational clustering to build cell populations and analysis of how these change throughout grain development. Second, we will apply new inducible expression systems to change the activity of regulatory factors at specific times to tease apart the importance of early versus late functions on grain parameters. We will also combine these approaches to assess the influence of regulatory factors activated in specific tissues on the gene expression in neighbouring and distant tissues. Finally, we will explore how these cell populations differ between wild and cultivated barleys and test the functional relevance of wild and cultivated regulatory factors to grain parameters. Taken together, our work will define the developmental trajectories of grain tissues and their responses to regulatory factors controlling maternal versus filial growth and survival, significantly advancing our understanding of cereal grain development.

了解谷物生产对于在我们不断变化的世界中保障粮食安全至关重要。大麦是一种广泛种植的全球谷物，对我国具有巨大的经济重要性，也是一种强有力的实验系统，可以识别和验证影响谷物产量和质量的过程。我们最近揭示了两个主调节因子在大麦中的重要性，这两个因子改变了保护性和营养性母体组织与填充谷物的富含淀粉、卡路里的子代组织之间的生长和存活之间的平衡。我们假设，通过限制母体组织的大小并促进其消除，将这种平衡从母体组织转移，提供了增加籽粒大小和重量所需的营养和空间。我们推测，这种平衡的调节可能不同的野生和栽培大麦，可能解释了改进的粮食栽培大麦。我们预测这一过程是通过控制基因表达和谷物组织中的信号传导来起作用的，但确切的机制仍不清楚。这种知识差距的部分原因是测试我们的预测是棘手的：谷物是这些组织的混合物，调节因子在早期和晚期都起作用，使组织和时间特异性事件及其对谷物的影响的准确评估复杂化和混淆。我们建议通过在大麦中应用两种前沿技术来克服这些挑战。首先，我们将使用单细胞RNA测序来测量单个细胞内的基因表达，然后通过计算聚类来构建细胞群，并分析这些细胞群在整个谷物发育过程中的变化。第二，我们将应用新的诱导表达系统来改变调节因子在特定时间的活性，以区分早期与晚期功能对谷物参数的重要性。我们也将联合收割机这些方法来评估在特定组织中激活的调节因子对邻近和远处组织中基因表达的影响。最后，我们将探讨这些细胞群体之间的野生和栽培大麦和测试的功能相关性的野生和栽培的调节因子，粮食参数的差异。总之，我们的工作将定义谷物组织的发育轨迹及其对控制母体与子代生长和存活的调控因素的反应，从而大大推进我们对谷物发育的理解。