Periodic Reporting for period 3 - PLANTGROWTH (Exploiting genome replication to design improved plant growth strategies)
Período documentado: 2022-06-01 hasta 2023-11-30
Plants are exposed to enormous challenges derived from their sessile nature and the changes in environmental conditions, such as temperature, drought, salinity, among others. These tend to reduce plant performance. As a consequence, there is an increasing pressure to improve plant yield to feed the growing world population, since plants constitute more than 50% of all calories taken by the human population worldwide. Plants respond to their environment with striking plasticity since they have developed complex signaling pathways based on the modulation of growth and cell proliferation. In the PLANTGROWTH project we are exploring unconventional ways to modulate plant development under stress conditions with a focus on how cells divide to produce new cells in the growing organs and how they duplicate their genetic material. The final aim of our project is to identify mechanisms that may serve as targets to rationally improve plant growth and environmental adaptation to a changing climate and eventually increase plant productivity.
After initiation of project, the COVID19 pandemic affected seriously some of the activities. However, we managed to organize them trying to maximize the group performance, which I recognize it has been a success, given the difficult circumstances (confinement for several months, several cases of COVID infection, reduction to half occupancy in labs, among others).
So far we have focused in generating a series of tools necessary to tackle the project objectives. These include the generation of transgenic plants specifically tailored for each objective, such as plants expressing markers for cell cycle analysis, plants expressing chromatin modifying enzymes targeted to specific genomic locations, testing a collection of mutants for phenotypic characteristics towards resistance to abiotic stress). These constitute a good complementation of molecular, cellular, genetic and genomic strategies.
We have also analyzed the role of two components of the pre-replication complex, ORC1a and ORC1b, and are analyzing the molecualr determinants of DNA replication origins.
So far we have focused in generating a series of tools necessary to tackle the project objectives. These include the generation of transgenic plants specifically tailored for each objective, such as plants expressing markers for cell cycle analysis, plants expressing chromatin modifying enzymes targeted to specific genomic locations, testing a collection of mutants for phenotypic characteristics towards resistance to abiotic stress). These constitute a good complementation of molecular, cellular, genetic and genomic strategies.
We have also analyzed the role of two components of the pre-replication complex, ORC1a and ORC1b, and are analyzing the molecualr determinants of DNA replication origins.
As originally proposed we expect to reach the main objectives by the end of the Project, which has been now extended until May 2025, due to the COVID19 pandemic.
We expect to have delivered several tools, invaluable not only for this project but also for the plant community. Some have been already generated, such a plant line that allows the possibility to determine the cell cycle parameters, useful to correlate with organ growth. Others are in progress. In addition, preliminary experiments have identified a series of mutants in DNA replication proteins that appear to have a better performance and growth under conditions of abiotic stress, such high salinity or drought. These are being now evaluated in more detail to identify the mechanisms involved and what kind of information obtained in the model plant Arabidopsis could be transferred to crop plants of economic interest.
We expect to have delivered several tools, invaluable not only for this project but also for the plant community. Some have been already generated, such a plant line that allows the possibility to determine the cell cycle parameters, useful to correlate with organ growth. Others are in progress. In addition, preliminary experiments have identified a series of mutants in DNA replication proteins that appear to have a better performance and growth under conditions of abiotic stress, such high salinity or drought. These are being now evaluated in more detail to identify the mechanisms involved and what kind of information obtained in the model plant Arabidopsis could be transferred to crop plants of economic interest.