Elucidating Signalling Networks in Plant Stress Responses

我们吃的所有食物都依赖于植物的生产力，无论是直接食用还是用来喂养我们随后食用的动物。科学家面临的一个主要挑战是了解植物是如何生长和发育的，以便培育出更适合我们要求的角色的植物。当作为农作物种植时，植物面临着许多环境压力，这些压力限制了它们发挥最大潜力的能力。这样的环境限制是由气候压力造成的，例如高温、缺雨导致干旱条件和高光强。随着全球变暖的后果在全世界变得更加极端，这类情况正变得更加频繁(政府间气候变化专门委员会工作组第四次评估报告，2007年4月6日；http://www.ipcc.ch/).然而，植物不仅必须与物质世界作斗争，还必须与生物世界作斗争。许多生物作为病原体生长在植物上(导致疾病)，并将植物用作食物来源，从而降低了农作物的产量。为了应对这些压力，植物已经形成了一系列的反应，其中许多都是常见的，无论是哪种类型的胁迫。植物的反应是非常复杂的，涉及许多基因使用的变化和许多激素水平的变化。尽管生物学家已经确定了这些反应途径的几个组成部分，但很明显，要了解它们是如何相互关联的，需要新的方法。最近，随着生物学家和数学家开始结合他们的专业知识来建立生物系统的数学模型，生物学的研究发生了变化，产生了系统生物学这一新领域。系统生物学有望将生物学家多年来在遗传学、生物化学和生理学方面产生的数据联系起来，以产生植物行为模型，从而预测植物将如何应对环境变化，以及这种反应将如何影响植物的生长。在这个项目中，我们将采用系统生物学的方法来模拟植物对几种环境压力的反应。我们将生产的新模型将使我们能够预测植物将如何对特定的胁迫做出反应。我们的长期目标是使用这些模型来选择更强大的植物，以应对它们面临的越来越大的环境压力，以维持我们的粮食生产。

We are dependent on the productivity of plants for all the food that we eat, either directly or to feed animals that we then consume. A major challenge for scientists is to understand how plants grow and develop in order to produce plants better suited to the role that we demand of them. When grown as crops plants face many environmental stresses that limit their ability to produce at their maximum potential. Such environmental limitations are caused by climatic pressures, such as high temperatures, lack of rain causing drought conditions and high light intensities. Conditions such as these are becoming more frequent as the consequence of global warming becomes more extreme worldwide (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Working Group Fourth Assessment Report, 6th April 2007; http://www.ipcc.ch/). However, it is not only the physical world that plants must contend with but also the biological. Many organisms grow on plants as pathogens (causing disease) and using the plant as a food source they reduce the yields of crops. To cope with these stresses plants have developed a whole range of responses many of which are common irrespective of the type of stress. The plant responses are very complex involving changes in use of many genes and alterations in the levels of many hormones. Although biologists have identified several components of these response pathways it has become clear that to understand how they are all interlinked, new approaches are needed. Recently, the study of biology has been changing as biologists and mathematicians have begun to combine their expertise to produce mathematical models of biological systems, producing the new field of Systems Biology. Systems Biology holds out the promise of linking the data that biologists have been producing for many years in terms of genetics, biochemistry and physiology to produce models of plant behaviour that allow predictions to be made as to how a plant will respond to environment changes and how this response will affect plant growth. In this project we will take a Systems Biology approach to model the plant's response to several environmental stresses. The novel models that we will produce will allow us to predict how a plant will respond to a particular stress. Our long term goal is to use these models to select for plants that are more robust in their response to the increasing environmental pressures that they face to sustain our production of food.