Objective The rapidly changing climate puts commonly used crop plants under strong pressure. It is therefore essential to develop novel breeding technologies to rapidly enhance crops to better withstand newly emerging stresses.Interestingly, a clear link between transposable elements (TEs), crop improvement and varietal diversification exists. Furthermore, in recent years the importance of (TEs) in evolution and adaptation to stresses has been recognized. However the use of TEs in crop breeding is currently very limited because it is not possible to control TE mobility. My research group has identified a novel highly conserved epigenetic silencing mechanism that represses the activity of TEs in Arabidopsis. We also found drugs capable of inhibiting this mechanism. Because these drugs target highly conserved enzymes we were able to show that our drug treatment is also effective in rice. We are therefore able to produce TE bursts in a controlled manner in virtually any plant. We can thus, for the first time, generate and study TE bursts in crop plants in real time. More importantly, we found that the accumulation of novel insertions of a heat-stress inducible TE produced plants that, at a high frequency, were more resistant to heat stress. This suggests that the stress that was initially applied to activate a specific TE in the parent, lead to an improved tolerance to that specific stress in the progeny of that plant in a very straight-forward manner. In this project I propose to accelerate plant breeding by testing and implementing a revolutionary TE-directed crop improvement technology. For that I plan to 1. Mobilize TEs in crop plants using selected stresses 2. Using these mobilized stress-responsive TEs breed novel crop plants resistant to those selected stresses and 3. Study the genetic and epigenetic impact of TE mobilization on host genomes. This project will have a broad impact on crop improvement and on the basic understanding of the evolutionary importance of TEs. Fields of science agricultural sciencesagriculture, forestry, and fisheriesagricultureagronomyplant breedingnatural sciencesbiological sciencesgeneticsgenomesnatural sciencesbiological sciencesbiochemistrybiomoleculesproteinsenzymesnatural sciencesbiological sciencesgeneticsepigenetics Programme(s) H2020-EU.1.1. - EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC) Main Programme Topic(s) ERC-2016-COG - ERC Consolidator Grant Call for proposal ERC-2016-COG See other projects for this call Funding Scheme ERC-COG - Consolidator Grant Coordinator EIDGENOESSISCHES DEPARTEMENT FUER WIRTSCHAFT, BILDUNG UND FORSCHUNG Net EU contribution € 1 604 521,74 Address Bundeshaus ost 3003 Bern Switzerland See on map Region Schweiz/Suisse/Svizzera Espace Mittelland Bern / Berne Activity type Public bodies (excluding Research Organisations and Secondary or Higher Education Establishments) Links Contact the organisation Opens in new window Participation in EU R&I programmes Opens in new window HORIZON collaboration network Opens in new window Other funding € 0,00 Beneficiaries (2) Sort alphabetically Sort by Net EU contribution Expand all Collapse all EIDGENOESSISCHES DEPARTEMENT FUER WIRTSCHAFT, BILDUNG UND FORSCHUNG Switzerland Net EU contribution € 1 604 521,74 Address Bundeshaus ost 3003 Bern See on map Region Schweiz/Suisse/Svizzera Espace Mittelland Bern / Berne Activity type Public bodies (excluding Research Organisations and Secondary or Higher Education Establishments) Links Contact the organisation Opens in new window Participation in EU R&I programmes Opens in new window HORIZON collaboration network Opens in new window Other funding € 0,00 INSTITUT NATIONAL DE RECHERCHE POUR L'AGRICULTURE, L'ALIMENTATION ET L'ENVIRONNEMENT Participation ended France Net EU contribution € 361 103,25 Address 147 rue de l'universite 75007 Paris See on map Region Ile-de-France Ile-de-France Paris Activity type Research Organisations Links Contact the organisation Opens in new window Website Opens in new window Participation in EU R&I programmes Opens in new window HORIZON collaboration network Opens in new window Other funding € 0,00
