植物体细胞突变作为植物变异的重要来源，与其生长发育、后代继承有着密切的关系，尚缺乏研究对其进行系统的追踪。多年生植物如何逃避有害体细胞突变不断积累而带来的不利影响？只在后期分化形成生殖细胞的体细胞其突变的传递情况、对下一代的影响如何？本项目拟选择多年生植物栽培桃与森林草莓作为研究对象，通过持续至少8年、每年对其体细胞突变产生和积累的情况进行分析，来探索其体细胞突变产生、保留和继承的规律与动态变化模式。本项目所选择的多年生植物物种的遗传多样性高、分支结构清晰易追踪、基因组小且易于分析，是高精度解析植物体细胞突变模式的理想材料。通过对研究对象的长期追踪，本研究将得到多年生植物体细胞突变全面的“时（年份）空(分支、组织）图谱”，并尝试揭示其与分生组织干细胞分裂模式的内在联系，从而为明确植物控制体细胞突变积累的方式打下基础，也为了解其个体内及个体间变异的形成及演化提供新的线索。

Somatic mutation generates within-individual heterogeneity, playing non-trivial role in organism development which could contribute to ageing and disease. Plants accumulate somatic mutations during its long lifespan without destroying by mutation disasters, while the underlying mechanism is still not fully resolved. Distinct from animals, plants have no early-differentiated germline, thus somatic mutations fixed in “proto-germ” cells could be transmitted to their progeny which fuel their genetic variations. Furthermore, as practically perennials are usually propagated by asexual means, making the somatic mutation possibly the sole source of their variations, study of plant somatic mutations is therefore of substantial importance to understand the biological process which generating and maintaining the variations in plants, especially in perennials. However, quantifying somatic mutations in perennials could be extremely challenging considering their long generation time, complex branching structures and repetitive genomes, which becomes applicable only recently with the advent of new genomic era. Peach (Prunus persica (L.) Batsch) and woodland strawberry (Fragaria vesca ssp. vesca) are important perennials each with a compact genome and a broad diversity, making them ideal plant models to study somatic mutations. By tracing the peach tree and the strawberry plant for over 8 years at single-leaf resolution, we sought to investigate how the somatic mutations are generated and fixed in their yearly branches, and how those mutations are transmitted to their progeny. The identified somatic mutations could subsequently serve as molecular markers to trace the stem cell lineages through their distributions in branches, flowers and progeny. The detailed patterns of somatic mutations and stem cell divisions would give clues to how perennials maintaining clonal variations as well as how those variations contributed to their genetic diversities.