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Content archived on 2024-06-18

PROLIFERA - Proliferative Arrest and its Ecological Relevance as a Resource Allocation Strategy in Arabidopsis

Objective

"The study of heritable variation in ecologically relevant plant traits can lead to insights into evolutionary processes and to increased agricultural output. Resource allocation strategies in flowering plants are of great interest, from an ecological and agricultural point of view. As plants have a modular body plan, they often initiate reproductive organs sequentially and the maternal plant has to balance current and future expenditures on offspring to produce an optimal number of seeds. Control mechanisms exerted by reproductive structures over maternal growth have been observed in several plant species -amongst them important crops- and are termed “correlative controls”. Such mechanisms might represent offspring begging strategies in plants, whereby offspring influences maternal resource allocation patterns. The molecular bases and ecological relevance of these control mechanisms are, however, unclear.
The applicant aims to i) use state-of-the art molecular techniques to investigate correlative controls in an annual plant ii) isolate genetic variation in the strength of controls that offspring exerts over maternal growth ii) apply recently developed methods in ecological competition experiments to compare fitness parameters amongst offspring from genetic variants and examine genotype-environment interactions. This will provide an ecological context to formulate an evolutionary hypothesis concerning the adaptive value of correlative controls in plants.
The interdisciplinary project will be implemented at the University of Zurich under supervision of Prof. Schmid, a world-renowned ecologist located at the Institute of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Sciences. It will be co-supervised by Prof. Grossniklaus (Institute of Plant Biology), expert in plant reproductive biology and genetics. The project will be a major step in the research career of the applicant Samuel Wuest, towards professional maturity and expertise at the intersection between disciplines."

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

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Topic(s)

Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.

Call for proposal

Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.

FP7-PEOPLE-2011-IEF
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Funding Scheme

Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.

MC-IEF - Intra-European Fellowships (IEF)

Coordinator

University of Zurich
EU contribution
€ 192 622,20
Address
RAMISTRASSE 71
8006 ZURICH
Switzerland

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Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
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Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

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