Investigating Relationship Between Aspects of A Gene Regulatory Network and Quantitative Crop Traits

自从现代农业出现以来，作物改良一直是一个重要的目标。面对现在更迫切确定的重大全球挑战，包括全球人口增加，气候变化以及从目前依赖化肥的生产转变的压力，作物改良对于满足不断变化的世界的需求至关重要。在上个世纪和绿色革命之后，我们改进和开发新的有益作物性状的能力得到了显著提高，尽管保持这种轨迹的能力受到等位基因多样性的限制。虽然编码序列的遗传多样性已被大量用于作物改良，但数量性状也受到非编码调控区序列变异的影响。该项目将通过观察一组转录因子在植物干细胞重编程和器官分化中的影响来研究基因调控元件和数量性状之间的联系。

Since the advent of modern farming, crop improvement has always been an important aim. In the face of major global challenges which are now more eagerly identified, including an increasing global population, anthropogenically induced changes to the climate and pressure to shift away from the current fertilizer-reliant production, crop improvement is essential to meet the demands of a changing world. Our ability to improve upon and develop novel beneficial crop traits has significantly improved over the last century and following the green revolution, although the ability to maintain this trajectory is limited by allelic diversity. While genetic diversity at coding sequences has been heavily exploited for crop improvement, quantitative traits are also influenced by sequence variation at non-coding regulatory regions. This project will investigate the link between gene-regulatory elements and quantitative traits by looking at the impact of a group of transcription factors in stem-cell reprogramming and organ differentiation in plants.