14 ERA-CAPS. EVOREPRO. Evolution of Sexual Reproduction in Plants

种子植物的经济重要性怎么强调都不为过，因为它们是我们食物、纤维和其他工业原料的主要来源。然而，我们生产足够的粮食、动物饲料和能源的能力日益受到人口膨胀、土地使用竞争、生物多样性迅速丧失和预计的全球气候变化的影响。高等植物的有性生殖过程对于提高作物产量、克服杂交障碍以及选择和固定品质性状具有特别重要的意义。在我们能够开发出对我们有利的操纵植物繁殖的工具之前，我们必须更深入地了解被子植物配子发育和双受精的基本机制。该项目将首次全面了解植物有性繁殖的分子进化，并将深入了解开花植物双受精的起源。此外，基因表达数据和生成的网络将有助于理解生物学途径的演变和基因功能预测，而不仅仅是本项目中的生殖。与此同时，关于作物物种的工作将确定对农业有用的基因，以便能够精确控制植物繁殖，克服杂交障碍，并通过改进杂交种子生产促进更好的育种计划。

The economic importance of seed plants cannot be overstated, as they are our main sources of food, fibre and other industrial raw materials. However, our capacity to generate sufficient food, animal feed and energy is increasingly compromised by human population expansion, competition for land use, rapid biodiversity loss and predicted global climate change. The process of sexual reproduction in higher plants is of particular importance for the aim of increasing crop yields, overcoming hybridization barriers and selecting and fixing quality traits. Before we can develop tools to manipulate plant reproduction in our favour we must achieve a deeper understanding of the basic mechanisms underlying gamete development and double fertilization mechanisms in angiosperms.The project will deliver the first comprehensive view of the molecular evolution of plant sexual reproduction and will provide insights into the origins of double fertilization in flowering plants. In addition, gene expression data and the networks generated will be valuable in understanding the evolution of biological pathways and gene function prediction beyond the focus on reproduction in this project. In parallel, the work on crop species will identify genes useful to the agricultural industry to enable precision control of plant reproduction, to overcome hybridization barriers and to promote better breeding schemes by improving hybrid seed production.