Project description
Plant hormones and evolution
Ethylene is a plant hormone that influences plant development and response to stress. However, it is unclear when plants started producing it. Funded by the European Research Council, the ETHYLUTION project is investigating the hypothesis that ethylene emerged when ancient plants transitioned from water to land habitats. Researchers will use model plant species representing early life on earth, and investigate the ethylene biosynthesis pathway and the diverse signalling pathways it triggers. Results will unveil important information on the role and functions of ethylene signalling during the evolutionary history of plants.
Objective
When ancestral plants colonized the land 450 million years ago, they needed to adapt to harsh environmental conditions when giving up their aquatic lifestyle. I hypothesize that during this water-to-land transition, the volatile plant hormone ethylene became an important growth regulator to face terrestrial stressors. In fact, modern-day crops use ethylene to regulate stress responses, and perhaps ethylene served this role in pioneering land plants to cope with the harsh conditions coinciding with this habitat transition.
During my postdoc, I showed that ethylene signaling was functionally assembled in ancestral Charophyte green algae, prior to land colonization. Now I question why and how early land plants produced ethylene. While seed plants make ethylene using ACC as precursor, non-seed plants follow a different, yet unknown ethylene biosynthesis pathway, which I want to reveal using the liverwort Marchantia polymorpha, a model species representing early life on earth. I also question why non-seed plants make ACC, but not use it for ethylene synthesis. Recent studies revealed that ACC itself can act as a signaling molecule, independent from ethylene, by an unknown signaling pathway to regulate plant development. I also postulate that both the alternative ethylene biosynthesis and ACC signaling pathway might have an origin in ancient algae, prior to land colonization, and might be conserved in seed plants, possibly exerting important functions yet to be uncovered. Using functional genetics in representative species of algae and crops, ETHYLUTION will unravel the importance and role of ACC and ethylene that allowed plants to thrive on earth, perhaps one of the most impactful events in the evolutionary history of plants.
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: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- natural sciences biological sciences genetics
- humanities history and archaeology history
- natural sciences biological sciences microbiology phycology
- agricultural sciences agriculture, forestry, and fisheries agriculture
- natural sciences chemical sciences organic chemistry aliphatic compounds
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Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
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Topic(s)
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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.
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.
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.
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants
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Call for proposal
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) ERC-2022-COG
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Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
3000 LEUVEN
Belgium
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.