400 Million Years of Food Transport in Plants: unearthing the origin, diversity and genetic toolkit of vasculature

植物中 4 亿年的食物运输：挖掘脉管系统的起源、多样性和遗传工具包

• 批准号: MR/Y03399X/1
• 负责人: Alexander Hetherington
• 金额: $ 75.88万
• 依托单位: University of Edinburgh
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Fellowship
• 财政年份: 2024
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2024 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=MR%2FY03399X%2F1
• 关键词: 400; Million; Years; Food; Transport

Plants transport sugars around their bodies in the specialised tissue termed the phloem. The phloem is essential for plant life and underpins the growth and survival of all economically important plants, whether crop or forest species. Given how important the phloem is for plant life it might be predicted that we would have a good understanding of its evolution. However, despite the vital role the phloem plays in living species our understanding of phloem evolution is rudimentary. Key questions remain unanswered including: (i) when did the phloem originate, (ii) how has its structure, function and genetic toolkit evolved over the past 400 million years, (iii) how has phloem evolution been driven by climate change?In this project we are answering these major questions and fundamentally increasing our understanding of phloem evolution over geological time. To achieve this we are working on three specific objectives:1. Defining the origin of the phloem in land plants2. Revealing major evolutionary innovations in phloem structure and function in relation to climatic change through geological time.3. Characterising the genetic innovations that underpinned the diversification of the phloemIn the initial stage of the Future Leaders Fellowship we have made substantial progress to achieving these objectives and are poised to make new discoveries that will change our understanding of phloem evolution. In the renewal phase of the Fellowship we will continue on our path to achieve these objectives and answer the overarching questions about phloem evolution. We will greatly expand on our objective to characterise the genetic innovations that underpinned the diversification of the phloem, with a broad scale approach to characterise the expression of genes involved in phloem development in ferns and lycophytes and aim to discover novel regulators of the phloem development in lycophytes.Collectively the outcome of the project will make a step change in our understanding of phloem evolution over the last 400 million year and demonstrate the added benefit of taking an interdisciplinary approach, combining studies of living plants, fossils and genetic networks together to answer major questions in plant evolution.

植物在称为韧皮部的专门组织中将糖运输到身体周围。韧皮部是植物生命所必需的，并且支撑所有经济上重要的植物（无论是作物还是森林物种）的生长和存活。考虑到韧皮部对植物生命的重要性，可以预测我们会对它的进化有很好的了解。然而，尽管韧皮部在生物物种中起着至关重要的作用，但我们对韧皮部进化的理解是初步的。关键问题仍然没有答案，包括：（i）韧皮部何时起源，（ii）在过去的4亿年中，其结构，功能和遗传工具包如何演变，（iii）气候变化如何驱动韧皮部进化？在这个项目中，我们正在回答这些主要问题，并从根本上增加我们对地质时期韧皮部进化的理解。为了实现这一目标，我们正在努力实现三个具体目标：1。定义陆地植物韧皮部的起源2。揭示了韧皮部结构和功能在地质时期与气候变化有关的重大进化创新。描述支撑韧皮部多样化的遗传创新在未来领导者奖学金的初始阶段，我们已经取得了实质性进展，以实现这些目标，并准备作出新的发现，这将改变我们对韧皮部进化的理解。在奖学金的更新阶段，我们将继续沿着实现这些目标并回答有关韧皮部进化的首要问题的道路前进。我们将大大扩展我们的目标，以证明支持韧皮部多样化的遗传创新，该项目的研究成果将使我们对过去400年来韧皮部进化的认识发生一个新的飞跃，这一发现证明了采取跨学科方法的额外好处，将活植物，化石和遗传网络的研究结合在一起，以回答植物进化中的主要问题。