An Integrated Analysis of Root Gravitropism

被暴风雨击倒的植物往往会向上弯曲，从而将它们的叶子、花朵和/或种子举到地面上，在那里它们可以继续生长和发育，远离土壤水分和病原体。农作物对俯伏也表现出或多或少有效的弯曲反应，从而使种子恢复到适合机械收获的位置。这种反应是可能的，因为所有植物器官都能感知它们相对于重力和光线的方向，并据此指导它们的生长。MPI的实验室正在研究使植物器官能够利用重力作为生长指南的分子机制。有了这个奖项，PI和他的同事们将使用最先进的分子遗传策略，包括下一代测序和高通量蛋白质鉴定，来分析野生型和突变型幼苗对重力刺激的全球基因组表达反应，从而产生一个全局的分子机制，使植物能够利用重力作为生长的指导。从长远来看，这个项目的结果将为文化、工程和/或植物育种战略的设计提供信息，这些战略旨在提高边缘土地或暴露于大风和风暴条件下的作物生产力，这是全球气候变化的预测后果。研究结果将发表在科学文献上，而原始数据将通过诸如美国国家生物技术信息中心（NCBI）的基因表达综合数据库（GEO: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/geo/）等公共数据库网站提供。这个项目也将包括一个重要的教学部分。除了一名博士后、研究生和本科生参与这项研究外，PI还将招募高中教师和学生开发K-12教育的教学模块，这些模块将整合本研究的材料，满足特定的课程需求，并与州和国家科学标准保持一致。

Plants prostrated by heavy storms tend to curve back upward, thereby lifting their leaves, flowers and/or seeds up above ground, where they can continue to grow and develop away from the soil moisture and pathogens. Crop plants also display a more-or-less efficient curvature response to prostration, thereby bringing seeds up back into a position that is amenable to mechanical harvesting. This response is possible because all plant organs can sense their orientation relative to gravity and light and direct their growth accordingly. The MPI's laboratory is investigating the molecular mechanisms that enable plant organs to use gravity as a growth guide. With this award, the PI and his co-workers will use state-of-the-art molecular genetic strategies, including next-generation sequencing and high-throughput identification of proteins, to analyze global genome expression responses to gravistimulation in wild type and mutant seedlings, thereby generating a global view of the molecular mechanisms that allow plants to use gravity as a guide for growth. In the long term, results derived from this project should yield information that will inform the design of cultural, engineering and/or plant-breeding strategies aimed at improving crop productivity in marginal lands or under conditions that expose them to heavier winds and storms, a predicted consequence of global climate change. The results will be published in the scientific literature, and the primary data will be made available through public repository web sites such as the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/geo/) repository at the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI). This project will also include an important instructional component. In addition to involving a postdoctoral fellow, graduate and undergraduate students in this research, the PI will recruit high-school teachers and students to develop instructional modules for K-12 education that integrate materials from this research, address specific curricular needs, and are aligned with state and national science standards.