PYLs蛋白家族的抗旱成靶性及分子机制研究

如何增强作物的抗旱性已经成为我国农业现代化进程中应对干旱和水资源短缺以确保粮食安全的一个重大挑战。脱落酸是植物应对干旱等逆境胁迫的重要激素分子，它通过调控PYLs受体蛋白可使植物降低气孔导度，从而提高植物的水分利用效率，因此，我们可以通过PYLs蛋白的化学调控或基因改良来提高植物的耐旱性。然而，PYLs及其下游调控蛋白家族成员众多，并存在功能上的冗余效应，究竟哪些PYLs蛋白是调节植物抗旱的分子靶标，即PYLs蛋白的抗旱成靶性并不清楚，因此，PYLs蛋白家族的抗旱成靶性及分子机制研究是新型植物抗旱调节剂开发的一个首要科学问题。本项目将深入研究PYLs蛋白的成靶性，并通过发展特异性ABA功能类似物来发现与植物抗旱密切相关的调控蛋白。力争通过“进化模拟－ABA类似物－作用机制”的研究循环，揭示PYLs蛋白的抗旱成靶性及分子机制，该项目将进一步推动绿色农药分子靶标的发现。

How to improve the drought resistance of crops has been a big challenge for antagonizing drought and water shortage to ensure food security in the agricultural modernization process of China. Abscisic acid (ABA), an important hormone for plant to antagonize abiotic stresses such as drought, can reduce stomatal conductance to inhibit transpiration by regulating PYLs protein, which can improve the water use efficiency. Hence, it can enhance drought resistance of plant by chemical control or genetic modification. However, PYLs and downstream regulatory protein family have many members, which have functional redundancy effect. Actually, it is not clear that which member of PYLs family is molecular target for regulating drought resistance of plant. In other words, drought resistance targetability of PYLs is unknown. So, the targetability and mechanism of PYLs regulated by ABA analogs is a major scientific issue of novel plant drought resistance regulator. The techniques of computational biology, chemical biology, plant molecular biology, biochemistry, and structural biology will be applied to study the drought resistance targetability of PYLs. Specific ABA analogs will be developed to discover new regulator protein closely related with plant drought resistance. Finally, the drought resistance targetability of PYLs and mechanism will be revealed through the research cycle of “evolutionary simulation-analog discovery-interaction mechanism”. The implementation of this project will promote the discovery of green pesticide molecular target.