Enhanced Growth and Stress Tolerance in Plants After Treatment With Ethylene

乙烯处理后植物的生长和胁迫耐受性增强

• 批准号: 2233695
• 负责人: Brad Binder
• 金额: $ 99.95万
• 依托单位: University of Tennessee Knoxville
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2023-08-01 至 2026-07-31
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2233695&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Enhanced; Growth; Stress; Tolerance; Plants

Enhancing crop yields is a major challenge because of an increasing human population, climate change, and reduction in arable land. Methods to increase growth and stress resistance in plants are key to addressing this challenge. However, the success of these approaches is not guaranteed since improvement in growth often leads to a decrease in stress tolerance and vice versa. This trade-off can have profound implications on bioengineering strategies to enhance plant yield. Plants are regulated by a variety of hormones including ethylene, which is a gas known to regulate many aspects of plant growth, development, and stress responses. We recently discovered that transient ethylene treatment early in seedling development leads to long-lasting changes that increase both growth and stress tolerance. This potentially provides a simple technique to improve plant vigor and yield. We propose to use a variety of scientific approaches to determine the mechanisms for this unanticipated result and develop treatment protocols applicable to a variety of plant species. Results from the proposed research will reveal new paradigms for treating plants and will provide targets for genetic modification to increase plant growth and vigor to improve food security. Overall, this research is expected to have significant impact on crop productivity, and enhance scientific and educational infrastructure and opportunities for students mentored including women and minorities. We recently made the surprising observation that ethylene treatment of germinating seeds in darkness, followed by transfer to light and ethylene-free conditions caused plants to grow much larger and display enhanced abiotic stress tolerance. Correlating with these changes, ethylene pre-treatment also led to long-lasting increases in both photosynthesis and the levels of starch, carbohydrates, and various core metabolites. We hypothesize that transient ethylene treatment of seedlings at critical times in their development results in epigenetic changes that cause long-lasting increases in photosynthesis and carbon metabolism leading to increased carbohydrate levels which enhance both growth and stress tolerance. The main goals of this research will be to test this hypothesis, uncover the mechanisms responsible, and establish how wide-spread these effects of ethylene are across plant species. To do this we propose an integrated set of experiments do determine the signaling pathway(s) responsible and determine the changes that occur in photosynthesis and carbohydrate metabolism. These studies involve multiple spatiotemporal scales and combine genetics, molecular biology, biochemistry, and physiology to provide mechanistic details about enhanced plant vigor. These studies will furnish links between subcellular events and whole plant responses. This research is jointly funded by the Physiological Mechanisms and Biomechanics program in the Division of Integrative Organismal Systems and the Cellular Dynamics and Functions cluster in the Division of Molecular and Cellular Biosciences.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

由于人口增加、气候变化和耕地减少，提高农作物产量是一项重大挑战。提高植物生长和抗逆性的方法是应对这一挑战的关键。然而，这些方法的成功并不能得到保证，因为生长的改善往往会导致应激耐受力的下降，反之亦然。这种权衡可能对提高植物产量的生物工程策略产生深远的影响。植物受到多种激素的调节，其中包括乙烯，乙烯是一种已知可以调节植物生长、发育和应激反应的许多方面的气体。我们最近发现，在幼苗发育早期进行短暂的乙烯处理会导致持久的变化，从而提高生长和抗逆性。这可能提供一种提高植物活力和产量的简单技术。我们建议使用各种科学方法来确定这种意外结果的机制，并制定适用于各种植物物种的处理方案。拟议研究的结果将揭示处理植物的新范例，并将为基因改造提供目标，以促进植物生长和活力，从而改善粮食安全。总体而言，这项研究预计将对作物生产力产生重大影响，并加强科学和教育基础设施以及为包括女性和少数民族在内的学生提供指导的机会。我们最近做出了令人惊讶的观察，即在黑暗中对发芽种子进行乙烯处理，然后转移到光照和无乙烯条件下，导致植物长得更大，并表现出增强的非生物胁迫耐受性。与这些变化相关的是，乙烯预处理还导致光合作用以及淀粉、碳水化合物和各种核心代谢物水平的持久增加。我们假设在幼苗发育的关键时刻对幼苗进行短暂的乙烯处理会导致表观遗传变化，从而导致光合作用和碳代谢的持久增加，从而导致碳水化合物水平增加，从而增强生长和胁迫耐受性。这项研究的主要目标是检验这一假设，揭示其机制，并确定乙烯的这些影响在植物物种中的广泛程度。为此，我们提出了一组综合实验来确定负责的信号通路并确定光合作用和碳水化合物代谢中发生的变化。这些研究涉及多个时空尺度，并结合遗传学、分子生物学、生物化学和生理学，提供有关增强植物活力的机制细节。这些研究将提供亚细胞事件和整个植物反应之间的联系。这项研究由综合有机体系统司的生理机制和生物力学项目以及分子和细胞生物科学司的细胞动力学和功能集群联合资助。该奖项反映了 NSF 的法定使命，经评估认为值得支持利用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准。