Meiotic adaptation to whole genome duplication in Arabidopsis arenosa

制造有机体的信息是在DNA中编码的。DNA被组织成单独的染色体，这样它就可以被访问、复制和轻松移动。在自然界中，特别是在植物界，生物体可能经历所有染色体的复制。这通常是有利的，因为有机体可能会变得更大，更好地适应具有挑战性的环境。事实上，人类一直在下意识地选择具有额外染色体组的植物，如面包小麦、甘蔗、棉花、咖啡、草莓、香蕉、油菜和土豆。这通过一个完全自然的过程生产出了更大、更有营养的作物。然而，一旦生产出具有双倍染色体组的有机体，就有一个迫在眉睫的问题。由于加倍的一组染色体可能相同或非常相似，它们在有性生殖的特定阶段相互缠绕在一起，称为减数分裂。这会导致不孕不育，并限制了培育新的高产作物的潜力。然而，进化通过创新或选择有利的自然变异反复解决了这个问题。我们现在能够理解某些基因的自然变异如何确保染色体在加倍后不会纠缠在一起，从而产生可生育的植物。这项工作的目的是在模式植物拟南芥中鉴定这些天然基因变体的功能。我们将使用染色体加倍和减半技术以及分子和细胞生物学方法，以便我们能够了解染色体稳定背后的机制，并将这些知识转化为更大、更高产的作物。该项目的第二个方面是确定控制染色体稳定的因素在与拟南芥关系密切的物种中是否相同。这将揭示是否可能针对相同或不同的因素，这将具有学术和农学兴趣。

The information to make an organism is encoded in DNA. DNA is organized into individual chromosomes so that it can be accessed, copied and easily moved. In nature, especially in the plant kingdom, organisms may experience duplication of all the chromosomes. This is often advantageous as the organisms may become bigger and better adapted to challenging environments. In fact, humans have been subconsciously selecting plants with extra sets of chromosomes, such as bread wheat, sugar cane, cotton, coffee, strawberry, banana, oil seed rape and potato. This has produced larger, more nutritious crops through a completely natural process. However, upon producing an organism with a doubled set of chromosomes there is an immediate problem. As the doubled sets of chromosomes may be identical or very similar, they get tangled up during a particular stage of sexual reproduction called meiosis. This causes infertility and limits the potential for generating novel, high yielding crops. However, evolution has repeatedly solved this problem, by innovating or selecting advantageous natural variation. We are now in a position to understand how natural variants of certain genes can ensure that chromosomes do not tangle after doubling, to produce fertile plants. The aim of this work is to functionally characterize these natural gene variants in the model plant Arabidopsis. We will use chromosome doubling and halving techniques as well as molecular and cell biology approaches so that we can understand the mechanism behind chromosome stabilization and translate this knowledge to produce bigger, high yielding crop plants. A second aspect of this project is to determine whether the factors controlling chromosome stabilization are the same in closely related species to Arabidopsis. This will reveal whether the same or different factors may be targeted, which will be of academic and agronomic interest.