Descripción del proyecto
El trigo europeo sometido a estrés calórico podría indicar el camino a seguir para encontrar las causas subyacentes del menor rendimiento de los cultivos
Los organismos poliploides (que poseen más de dos conjuntos de pares de cromosomas) son un laboratorio natural interesante para estudiar alteraciones genéticas y distintas funciones de los mismos genes (subfuncionalización o neofuncionalización). El ARN traduce el código genético para la síntesis proteica para las células hijas. Los cambios en nucleótidos individuales de ARN (polimorfismos de un solo nucleótido o SNP, por sus siglas en inglés) pueden dar lugar a cambios complejos en la estructura en 3D del ARN. Aparte de su vinculación con enfermedades, las alteraciones estructurales del ARN también son el sustrato biológico de la evolución y la adaptación al medio ambiente. El proyecto INSPIRATION está investigando las variaciones estructurales inducidas por los SNP en el ARN del trigo poliploide. Los científicos esperan elucidar si esta variación guarda relación con la subfuncionalización o la neofuncionalización, y si esto desempeña un papel en la tolerancia al estrés calórico, con implicaciones para la mejora genética de cultivos.
Objetivo
Polyploidization is one of the major driving forces of plant evolution and crop domestication and plays a key role in plant environmental adaptation. The function of multiple gene copies (homoeologous genes) from different subgenomes can vary from each other (sub/neofunctionalization), which is considered as the key to understanding polyploidy evolution and environmental adaptation. However, most sequence variations between homoeologous genes lie on the non-coding region or are synonymous mutations, which cannot lead to codon change. To data, very little is known about how the vast majority of sequence variations over the gene body regions drives subgenomes sub/neofunctionalization in polyploidy.
Recently, Single Nucleotide Polymorphism (SNP) induced RNA structural alteration is demonstrated to play key roles in post-transcriptional regulations such as RNA decay and splicing. Further studies in human disease showed that SNP-induced RNA structural changes are associated with diverse human disease and phenotypes. And also, temperature can affect the RNA structures that more stably folded mRNAs tended to show lower decay rate. This brought attention to the existing function of synonymous mutations as well as non-coding SNPs. Thus, I hypothesize that SNP-induced RNA structural alteration might lead to the subgenomes sub/neofunctionalization and play an important role in temperature stress response.
As tetraploid wheat is widely grown in the Europe and its yield is severely affected by heat stress, I will test my hypothesis in tetraploid wheat. Firstly, genome-wide RNA secondary structure profiling will be applied to compare SNP-induced RNA structure variations between subgenomes in tetraploid wheat. Secondly, I will investigate the roles of SNP-induced RNA structure variations in RNA stability and splicing pattern changes between subgenomes. Finally, I will assess the role of SNP-induced RNA structure variations in response to high temperature.
Ámbito científico
Palabras clave
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Régimen de financiación
MSCA-IF - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships (IF)Coordinador
NR4 7UH Norwich
Reino Unido