Project description
Heat-stressed European wheat may point the way to underlying causes for reduced crop yield
Polyploid organisms (having more than two paired sets of chromosomes) provide an interesting natural laboratory to study genetic alterations and different functions for the same genes (sub- or neo-functionalisation). RNA translates the genetic code for protein synthesis to daughter cells. Changes in individual RNA nucleotides (single nucleotide polymorphisms or SNPs) can lead to complex changes in the 3D structure of RNA. Besides links to disease, RNA structural alterations are also the biological substrate of evolution and environmental adaptation. The INSPIRATION project is investigating SNP-induced structural variations in RNA in polyploid wheat. Scientists hope to elucidate whether such variation is related to sub- or neo-functionalisation, and if this plays a role in tolerance to heat stress, with implications for crop breeding.
Objective
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.
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Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
MSCA-IF - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships (IF)Coordinator
NR4 7UH Norwich
United Kingdom