Improving seed traits by understanding and modulating transcription

食物是稳定和繁荣文明的基石。大多数主食和植物油来自种子。由于持续的气候变化和不断增长的世界人口，确保种子产量和质量是一项迫切需要。谷物和油籽是加拿大农场现金收入的最重要组成部分。因此，了解种子生物学对经济也至关重要。 我的长期目标是提高种子质量和产量。几十年来对种子的生理特征和遗传研究已经产生了大量的知识和许多重要的悬而未决的问题。我的短期目标是用系统方法回答其中的一些问题。目的1旨在了解一组核心转录因子（TF）和转录调节因子（TRs）如何协调模式植物拟南芥种子发育过程中数千个基因的表达。目标2将解决如何在种子中以组织特异性方式精确调节基因表达。目标3旨在将拟南芥的知识转化为加拿大的重要作物油菜，并确定与农业直接相关的发现。新的实验设计、高通量测序技术和高效的表型分析设置将保障拟议研究的稳健性。这项工作和产生的数据将创建一个优秀的平台，培训具有先进分子和定量数据分析技能的HQP。

Food is a cornerstone of a stable and prosperous civilization. Most staple foods and vegetable oils come from seeds. Ensuring seed yield and quality is a pressing need because of the ongoing climate change and a growing world population. Grains and oilseeds are the most significant components of farm cash receipts in Canada. Therefore, understanding seed biology is also vital for the economy. My long-term goal is to improve seed quality and yield. Decades of physiological characterizations and genetic studies of seeds have generated a remarkable pool of knowledge and many significant open questions. My short-term objectives are to answer some of these questions using systems approaches. Objective 1 aims to understand how a set of core transcription factors (TFs) and transcriptional regulators (TRs) coordinate the expression of thousands of genes during seed development in a model plant species Arabidopsis thaliana. Objective 2 will address how to precisely modulate gene expression in a tissue-specific manner in seeds. Objective 3 aims to translate knowledge from Arabidopsis to canola, an essential crop in Canada, and to pinpoint discoveries immediately relevant to agriculture. The robustness of the proposed study will be safeguarded by novel experimental designs, high-throughput sequencing technologies, and efficient phenotyping setups. The work and resulting data will create an excellent platform to train HQPs with both advanced molecular and quantitative data analysis skills.