Development of a genome-wide enhancer map in Arabidopsis thaliana

该项目旨在开发基础知识和技术，使科学家能够设计出能够在各种环境胁迫下生长的植物，如寒冷、高温、干旱和盐分胁迫。该项目的成果将帮助植物育种者开发适应环境和气候变化的未来作物。该项目还寻求将基础植物科学研究与下一代植物科学家的教学和培训结合起来。该项目的培训方面包括来自任职人数不足群体的研究生，教学部分包括在塔斯基吉大学开发和实施植物生物技术课程，该大学的学生人口主要由任职人数不足的群体组成。植物在不同的发育阶段和不同的生物和非生物胁迫下，基因表达受到增强剂的调控。增强子的作用独立于相对于靶基因启动子的距离和方向，这使得用传统方法识别增强子极其困难。在植物物种中几乎没有增强剂的特征，这在很大程度上是由于缺乏有效的方法来鉴定增强子。本项目旨在建立一个基于与增强子相关的染色质签名的模式植物拟南芥的增强子识别系统。该项目包括三个具体目标：(1)开发几个用于增强子预测的全基因组数据集；(2)在拟南芥中开发全基因组增强子图谱；(3)分离和验证一组组织特异性增强子和在冷、热、干旱和盐胁迫下激活的增强子。

This project intends to develop fundamental knowledge and technology for enabling scientists to engineer plants that can be grown under a variety of environmental stresses, such as cold, heat, drought, and salt stresses. Results from this project will help plant breeders develop future crops that will adapt to environmental and climate changes. This project also seeks to integrate basic plant science research with the teaching and training of the next-generation of plant scientists. The training aspect of this project includes graduate students from underrepresented groups and the teaching component includes the development and implementation of a plant biotechnology course at Tuskegee, a university whose student population is composed primarily of underrepresented groups. Gene expression in plants is regulated by enhancers at different developmental stages and under different biotic and abiotic stresses. Enhancers act independently of the distance and orientation with respect to the promoters of target genes, which make enhancers extremely difficult to identify using traditional methods. Very few enhancers have been characterized in plant species, which is largely due to the lack of an efficient methodology for enhancer identification. This project aims to establish an enhancer identification system in model plant Arabidopsis thaliana based on chromatin signatures that are associated with enhancers. This project includes three specific goals: (1) Developing several genome-wide datasets that will be used for enhancer prediction; (2) Developing a genome-wide enhancer map in A. thaliana; (3) Isolating and validating a set of tissue-specific enhancers and enhancers activated under cold, heat, drought, and salt stresses.