Novel si/miRNAs in epigenetic regulation of salt stress responses in M. truncatula

Objective

"The lifestyle of plants requires them to constantly adapt their growth and development to environmental variation. While highly related plants coding transcriptome are conservated, the non-protein-coding RNA (npcRNA) trascriptome diverges during evolution and within species. It is known that npcRNA can modificate spatio-temporal gene expression patterns, and play a key role in developmental adaptation and plasticity. In the last years, small/miRNA (two npcRNA families) have emerged as a novel and important class of regulators, due to their capacity to mediate transcriptional and post-transcriptional regulation of specific targets, including members of the epigenetic machinery, in development and stress response. Epigenetic mechanisms cause some of the stress-induced stable modifications of transcriptional states. Epimutations occur at a higher frequency than DNA mutations because they are not associated to changes in DNA sequence, playing a major role in mechanisms of adaptation because they allow rapid changes in gene expression. In addition, they can be maintained through mitosis and/or meiosis.
Improving drought and salt stress tolerance in crops have been major goals in agriculture research for several years using classical breeding or genetic engineering of specific traits. However, several drawbacks have often been observed, including retarded growth or instability of the agronomic trait, sometimes due to transgene silencing, calling for new methods. In this way, as epigenetic changes account for the plasticity of plant genome responses to developmental and environmental cues, studies need to be performed to elucidate the regulatory loop involving mi/siRNA and the epigenetic machinery.
The aim of the proposed project is analyze the role of mi/siRNA in epigenetic regulation of salt stress response in Medicago truncatula, using bioinformatics and genetic approaches, in order to create new epigenetic germplasms and improve crop productivity."

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.

• natural sciences biological sciences genetics DNA
• natural sciences biological sciences genetics mutation
• natural sciences biological sciences genetics RNA
• natural sciences biological sciences genetics heredity
• natural sciences biological sciences genetics genomes

Programme(s)

Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.

• FP7-PEOPLE - Specific programme "People" implementing the Seventh Framework Programme of the European Community for research, technological development and demonstration activities (2007 to 2013)

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.

• FP7-PEOPLE-2010-IEF - Marie-Curie Action: "Intra-European fellowships for career development"

Call for proposal

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

FP7-PEOPLE-2010-IEF
See other projects for this call

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