An integrated informatics and resources platform for Reverse Genetics in dicots (RevGenUK)

在当今不断变化的气候下，我们一直在努力改善作物，以实现更可持续的农业实践。要做到这一点，我们需要非常详细地了解植物是如何生长和工作的。遗传学是帮助我们获得这种理解的有力工具。利用它，我们能够分析植物的整个基因组成（基因组），以发现它们发育和正常运作所需的所有基因。我们可以利用这些信息来研究在我们感兴趣的特定基因（或基因）中有缺陷的变体。这有助于我们了解基因在正常运作时是如何工作的，从而了解它在植物中的作用。一些植物物种的全基因组测序已经完成，但仍有数以千计的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来处理种子，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。通过产生大量的后代，我们可以使基因组中的每个基因都有缺陷。接下来的问题是在种群中找到你感兴趣的基因有缺陷的植物。我们已经开发出一些方法，可以找出有缺陷的基因，并找到含有这些基因的植物，因此我们可以找出基因的作用。这整个过程被称为反向遗传学。没有一种化学或物理方法可以诱导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。在这个项目中，我们将为植物科学研究界建立一个资源，以便他们能够发现他们感兴趣的特定基因的功能。我们将建立豆科植物和芸苔类植物的种群（用化学物质或辐射处理），这些植物含有不同形式的缺陷基因。我们已经开发了基于高效机器（测序仪）的特殊方法，可以检测与正常基因相比的缺陷。然后，科学家可以向我们发送有关感兴趣的基因的信息，例如，一个豆科植物基因，然后我们可以在我们成千上万的豆科植物种群中寻找特定基因的缺陷。然后我们把植物的种子发给他们，让他们生长，研究有缺陷的基因在植物中的作用。我们收集到的关于植物和它们成千上万的基因的所有信息都将存储在一个计算机数据库中，这个数据库是我们专门为这个项目建立的，尽管它将以一种其他人也可以使用的方式编写。它也可以在全球网络上使用，这样英国或世界上任何地方的科学家都可以来浏览数据库，看看是否包含他们感兴趣的基因信息。这样做的原因是为了提高农作物在不同环境下的生长能力，特别是在不利的环境下，并帮助农民以可持续的方式工作，使用更少的肥料，更少的除草剂和杀虫剂。

In today's 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 consequently its role in the plant. Some 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 chemicals or radiation that damage 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 this project we will set up a resource for the plant science research community so that they can discover the function of their particular genes of interest. We will set up populations of legumes and brassicas (treated with chemicals or radiation) that contain plants bearing different forms of defective genes. We have developed special methods based on highly efficient machines (sequencers) that can detect the defects when compared to the normal gene. Scientists can then send us information about the gene of interest, for example, a legume gene, and we can then look for defects in their specific gene in our population of thousands of legume 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 will construct 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, and to help the farmer work in a sustainable way using less added fertiliser and fewer herbicides and pesticides.