A COMMUNITY RESOURCE IN WHEAT TRANSFORMATION

大多数关注全球粮食安全的分析师估计，到2050年，粮食产量需要翻一番，才能养活95亿人。小麦是目前为止英国和欧洲西北部最重要的作物。在英国，小麦平均产量为每公顷8-10吨；在未来40年内，要使后者翻一番，需要育种人员目前每年增加约74公斤/公顷，必须将产量提高2.5-3倍。与此同时，我们的气候正在变化，我们需要更好地适应干旱和减少化肥投入的小麦品种，以维持负担得起、有营养和安全的可持续粮食供应。许多技术将有助于解决这些目标，而转基因(GM)将不可避免地做出贡献。这将是直接的，随着具有新特性的转基因小麦品种的开发和引入，或者间接地，作为更好地了解性状基因如何发挥作用的研究工具。转基因生物(GMO)的遗传物质中添加了一个或一组新的基因。就植物而言，它们可以由一种自然产生的土壤细菌--根癌农杆菌--引入。细菌将一小段含有新基因的DNA插入植物细胞中，从单个转化的细胞中，可以再生出正常的可育植物。这一过程发生在自然环境中有限范围的植物中，特定的细菌基因被插入到导致疾病的植物细胞中。在过去的30年里，这项技术取得了重大进展，消除了插入植物细胞的细菌基因，并将植物物种的范围扩大到许多作物。然而，小麦的转化一直是相当困难和低效的，直到最近日本一家公司的研究人员取得了进展。NIAB有一个主要专注于转基因小麦的作物转化团队，现在正在使用这些新技术，取得了巨大的成功。我们可以在小麦细胞中添加一个(或几个)新基因，它已经包含了大约150,000个基因，并再生出一个新的“微调”小麦植株。这是一个重要的工具，可以帮助我们了解基因对植物的影响，而且比传统的育种技术精确得多。它既可以为研究提供基因功能分析，也可以为培育用于商业开发的新特征提供一条可行的途径。到目前为止，转基因作物在很大程度上仅限于对除草剂或昆虫具有抗性的特征，但现在正在研究新一代赋予抗旱、抗病、增产或健康益处的特征，这些特征将在实现粮食安全和未来产量增加方面发挥重要作用。其中一些基因来自其他作物物种，如果没有转基因，就不可能在小麦上进行研究。小麦转化社区资源将使英国学术研究人员更容易、更具成本效益地获得世界上最好的小麦转化系统。它将特别鼓励从事其他物种工作的植物科学家评估他们在小麦中的基因，并为进一步的研究提供有价值的材料。这笔资金还将推动这项技术的进步，以便将大量或多个基因组合高效、经济地转移到一系列小麦品种进行评估。

Most analysts looking at global food security estimate that food production needs to double to feed 9.5 billion people by 2050. Wheat is by far the most important crop in the UK and north western Europe. In the UK average wheat yield is 8-10 tonnes per hectare; doubling the latter over the next 40 years requires that the current annual increases made by breeders, around 74 kg/ha, have to improve 2.5- to 3-fold. Meanwhile our climate is changing and we need wheat varieties which are better adapted to drought and reduced fertilizer inputs to maintain a sustainable supply of affordable, nutritious and safe food. Many technologies will contribute to tackling these targets and it is inevitable that genetic modification (GM) will make a contribution. This will either be directly, with the development and introduction of GM wheat varieties with new traits, or indirectly, as a research tool to better understand how trait genes function.A genetically modified organism (GMO) has a new gene or set of genes added to its genetic material. In the case of plants, these can be introduced by a naturally occurring soil bacterium, Agrobacterium tumefaciens. The bacterium inserts a small piece of DNA containing the new gene into the plant cell, and from the single transformed cell, a normal fertile plant can be regenerated. This process occurs in the natural environment in a limited range of plants, with specific bacterial genes being inserted into the plant cell that cause disease. Over the last 30 years, significant advancements have been made to this technology, removing the bacterial genes which are inserted into the plant cell, and extending the range of plant species to many crops. However wheat has remained quite difficult and inefficient to transform, until recent advances were made by researchers at a company in Japan.NIAB has a Crop Transformation Team which mainly focuses on GM wheat, and is now using these new techniques with great success. We can add one (or a few) new genes into a wheat cell, which already contains an estimated 150,000 genes, and regenerate a new "fine-tuned" wheat plant. This is an important tool, which helps us understand what effect the gene has on the plant, and is much more precise than traditional breeding techniques. It allows both functional analysis of genes for research, and importantly a viable route to breeding new traits for commercial exploitation.GM crops have to date have largely been confined to traits giving resistance to herbicides or insects, but a new generation of traits which confer drought tolerance, disease resistance, yield improvements or health benefits are now being examined which will have an important role to play in achieving food security and future increases in production. Some of these genes come from other crop species and would be impossible to study in wheat without GM. The Community Resource in Wheat Transformation will make it easier and more cost effective for UK academic researchers to access the best wheat transformation system in the world. It will particularly encourage plant scientists working in other species to evaluate their genes in wheat, and provide valuable materials for further research. The funding will also allow the technology to advance so that large or multiple gene combinations can be efficiently and economically transferred to a range of wheat varieties for evaluation.