Developing Next Generation Genetic Tools for Wheat

粮食安全将是21世纪世纪的主要挑战之一。据预测，到2050年，世界粮食产量必须增加50%。这是对全球气候变化和资源限制的压力。迎接这一挑战将需要开发创新战略，利用我们前所未有的生物学知识。开发新的、低投入、高产的小麦品种将是实现2050年目标的基础。目前，世界小麦的年产量约为6.5亿公吨，占世界谷物产量的四分之一。面包小麦是一种六倍体，具有复杂的基因组，是人类基因组大小的五倍。在利物浦大学，我们目前正在从事一个项目，使用新的“下一代测序技术”解码小麦基因组。小麦基因组测序以及利用这些序列数据开发新的遗传工具将是实现提高粮食生产率目标的关键。这个提议的目的是为我提供一个再培训计划，围绕开发两种新型遗传分析工具的生物信息学而建立。这些项目将立即使用在利物浦产生的序列数据。该项目的第一部分旨在开发一种方法来捕获基因丰富的小麦区域。使用这种捕获技术，与“下一代测序技术”一起，我将确定在小麦矮秆品系rht 12中缺失的基因组区域，并通过确定重叠缺失缺失负责矮化表型的缺失基因。鉴定该基因将使我们能够了解该品种的矮化机制。矮生性是一种有价值的经济性状，并且是绿色革命的核心，允许增加氮输入而不会使植物倒下。该缺失定位策略可用于其它有经济价值的缺失突变体的定位。小麦由三个基因组组成，该项目的第二部分是开发一种策略，以了解这三个基因组对温度的差异反应。我将使用“下一代测序技术”，采用一种称为RNA-seq的技术。了解小麦在分子水平上对温度的反应对于减轻全球温度升高对产量的影响具有重要意义。同样，这种新工具将对小麦研究人员和其他研究复杂基因组作物的研究人员有相当大的用处。这项提议是与利物浦大学高级基因组设施的研究人员和约翰英尼斯中心的小麦遗传学家合作提出的。

Food security is set to be one of the major challenges of the 21st century. By 2050, it is predicted that world food production will have to increased by 50%. This is against the pressures of global climate change and resource limitations. Meeting this challenge is going to require the development of innovative strategies which make use of our unprecedented knowledge of biology. Developing new, low input, high yielding varieties of wheat, will be fundamental to meeting these 2050 goals. The current world wheat harvest is approximately 650 million MT a year, making up a quarter of the world cereal harvest. Bread wheat is a hexaploid with a complex genome, five times the size of the human genome. At the University of Liverpool we are currently engaged in a project to decode the wheat genome using new 'next generation sequencing technology'. A sequenced genome for wheat, together with the development of new genetic tools exploiting this sequence data, will be key to meeting the increased food productivity goal. The aim of this proposal is a programme of retraining for me, built around developing the bioinformatics for two novel genetic analysis tools. The projects will make immediate use of the sequence data being generated at Liverpool. The first part of the project aims to develop a methodology to capture the gene-rich region of wheat. Using this capture technology, together with 'next generation sequencing technology' I will identify the region of the genome deleted in a dwarf line of wheat, rht12, and by identifying overlapping deletions the missing gene responsible for the dwarfing phenotype. Identifying the gene will allow us to understand the dwarfing mechanism in this variety. Dwarfism is a valuable economic trait and lay at the heart of the green revolution allowing increased nitrogen input without plants falling over. This deletion mapping strategy could be used to map other economical valuable deletion mutants. Wheat is made up of three genomes and the second part of the project is to develop a strategy to understand how these three genomes differentially respond to temperature. I will use 'next generation sequencing technology' adapting a technique call RNA-seq. Understanding how wheat responds to temperature at the molecular level will be important for mitigating the affect of global temperature increase on yield. Again , this new tool will be of considerable use to wheat researchers and other researchers working with crops with complex genomes. The proposal is in collaboration with researchers at Advance Genome Facility at the University of Liverpool and wheat geneticists at the John Innes Centre.