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，我们生产足够的食物、动物饲料和能源的能力正日益受到人口扩张、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。高等植物有性生殖过程对于提高作物产量、克服杂交障碍和选择和固定优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生产的工具之前，我们必须对被子植物配子发育和双受精机制的基本机制有更深入的了解。该项目将首次全面了解植物有性生殖的分子进化，并将为开花植物双受精的起源提供见解。此外，基因表达数据和生成的网络将在理解生物途径的进化和基因功能预测方面有价值，而不仅仅是在这个项目中关注生殖。与此同时，对作物物种的研究将确定对农业有用的基因，以实现对植物繁殖的精确控制，克服杂交障碍，并通过提高杂交种子产量来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 otherindustrial raw materials. However, our capacity to generate sufficient food, animal feed and energy is increasinglycompromised by human population expansion, competition for land use, rapid biodiversity loss and predicted global climatechange. 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 plantreproduction in our favour we must achieve a deeper understanding of the basic mechanisms underlying gametedevelopment and double fertilization mechanisms in angiosperms.The project will deliver the first comprehensive view of the molecular evolution of plant sexual reproduction and will provideinsights into the origins of double fertilization in flowering plants. In addition, gene expression data and the networksgenerated will be valuable in understanding the evolution of biological pathways and gene function prediction beyond thefocus on reproduction in this project. In parallel, the work on crop species will identify genes useful to the agriculturalindustry to enable precision control of plant reproduction, to overcome hybridization barriers and to promote better breedingschemes by improving hybrid seed production.