Accelerating plant breeding by modulating recombination.

通过调节重组加速植物育种。

• 批准号: MR/T043253/1
• 负责人: Andrew Lloyd
• 金额: $ 158.92万
• 依托单位: Aberystwyth University
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Fellowship
• 财政年份: 2021
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2021 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=MR%2FT043253%2F1
• 关键词: Accelerating; plant; breeding; modulating; recombination.

To meet expected demand, the world will need to produce 50 percent more food in 2050 than it did in 2012. While similar growth rates have been achieved in the past, future growth faces the additional pressure of climate change and the need for reduced chemical inputs. Sustainably enhancing agricultural production is therefore a major challenge facing the sector.A valuable source of traits for disease resistance and abiotic stress tolerance resides in thousands of living wild crop relatives. Accessing these traits for plant breeding, however, is limited by "genetic drag", where low levels of genetic exchange (recombination) means that both desirable and undesirable "wild traits" are introduced and can be difficult to separate. Boosting recombination overcomes genetic drag allowing access to diverse germplasm, as well as increasing the efficiency of traditional breeding programs, helping generate the new combinations of traits required for crop improvement in fewer generations.Recombination can be increased in plants 8-fold by knocking out anti-recombinase genes. However, establishing multigene knockouts in every breeding program is not practical, approaches used to generate mutants may preclude cultivation in tightly (GMO) regulated environments and the mutations introduced can reduce fertility, so wild type alleles must be restored prior to cultivation. Transiently increasing recombination without modification of the recombination machinery itself would solve these problems.To achieve this goal, we will use high-throughput screening assays to identify small molecule inhibitors of key recombination suppressing proteins that can be used to transiently boost recombination in a wide variety of crop species. To identify inhibitors, we will design targeted compound libraries for screening based on molecules identified in large biomedical drug screens that inhibit human orthologs of our target proteins. In addition, virtual screening of large compound libraries will be used to identify further compounds of interest for testing. We will also identify and/or develop plant versions of peptides known to boost recombination in mammalian systems. Once identified, delivery of recombination boosting small-molecules will be optimised for use in crops. This will be initially be undertaken in Brassica and barley, covering a dicot crop closely related to the model plant Arabidopsis, and a key grain crop, both with well-developed cytological tools. Another route for crop development is to incorporate the traits and diversity of two genomes into a single individual - known as allopolyploidy. Allopolyploid plants are common in agriculture (e.g. wheat and cotton) as their fixed hybrid nature usually results in improved agricultural traits. Despite their potential, previous attempts to generate new allopolyploid crops have failed as they tend to have genomic instability and low fertility due to recombination between the two sub-genomes. Two interacting genes have recently been implicated in suppressing this inter-genomic recombination and we will assess the potential to use/modify these genes, and others in the same pathway, to engineer a stable meiosis in new allopolyploids. If successful we will use this approach to generate new genetically stable allopolyploid Brassica and pasture grasses.This multi-disciplinary project, draws on expertise of the Fellow and Project Partners in molecular plant science, phenomics, plant breeding, polyploidy, medicinal chemistry and biochemistry to modify recombination in plants for accelerated plant breeding, helping to develop the high nutrition, climate ready and disease resistant crops needed to meet future food needs. The final three years of the project will involve product development in collaboration with breeding companies to optimise delivery and effectiveness during plant breeding and establishment of a start-up company to commercialise the product(s) developed.

为了满足预期需求，到 2050 年，世界将需要比 2012 年多生产 50% 的粮食。虽然过去已经实现了类似的增长率，但未来的增长面临着气候变化的额外压力以及减少化学品投入的需要。因此，可持续地提高农业产量是该部门面临的一项重大挑战。抗病性和非生物胁迫耐受性的宝贵性状来源存在于数千种现存的野生作物近缘种中。然而，利用这些性状进行植物育种受到“遗传阻力”的限制，其中低水平的遗传交换（重组）意味着引入了所需和不需要的“野生性状”，并且可能难以分离。促进重组克服了遗传阻力，允许获得不同的种质，并提高了传统育种计划的效率，有助于在更少的世代内产生作物改良所需的新性状组合。通过敲除抗基因，可以将植物中的重组增加 8 倍。 -重组酶基因。然而，在每个育种计划中建立多基因敲除并不切合实际，用于产生突变体的方法可能会妨碍在严格（转基因）监管的环境中进行培养，并且引入的突变会降低生育力，因此必须在培养之前恢复野生型等位基因。在不修改重组机制本身的情况下瞬时增加重组将解决这些问题。为了实现这一目标，我们将使用高通量筛选试验来鉴定关键重组抑制蛋白的小分子抑制剂，这些抑制剂可用于瞬时促进多种重组。作物种类。为了识别抑制剂，我们将根据大型生物医学药物筛选中鉴定出的抑制我们目标蛋白的人类直系同源物的分子，设计用于筛选的目标化合物库。此外，大型化合物库的虚拟筛选将用于识别更多感兴趣的化合物进行测试。我们还将鉴定和/或开发已知可促进哺乳动物系统重组的植物版本的肽。一旦确定，重组促进小分子的传递将被优化以用于农作物。这项研究最初将在芸苔属和大麦中进行，涵盖与模式植物拟南芥密切相关的双子叶作物，以及一种关键的谷物作物，这两种作物都拥有成熟的细胞学工具。作物发育的另一种途径是将两个基因组的性状和多样性整合到一个个体中 - 称为异源多倍体。异源多倍体植物在农业中很常见（例如小麦和棉花），因为它们的固定杂交性质通常会改善农业性状。尽管它们具有潜力，但之前产生新的异源多倍体作物的尝试都失败了，因为它们往往由于两个亚基因组之间的重组而具有基因组不稳定和低生育力。最近发现两个相互作用的基因与抑制这种基因组间重组有关，我们将评估使用/修改这些基因以及同一途径中的其他基因的潜力，以在新的异源多倍体中设计稳定的减数分裂。如果成功，我们将利用这种方法产生新的遗传稳定的异源多倍体芸苔属和牧草。这个多学科项目利用了研究员和项目合作伙伴在分子植物科学、表型组学、植物育种、多倍体、药物化学和生物化学方面的专业知识，修改植物重组以加速植物育种，帮助开发满足未来粮食需求所需的高营养、气候适应和抗病作物。该项目的最后三年将涉及与育种公司合作开发产品，以优化植物育种过程中的交付和有效性，并建立一家初创公司将开发的产品商业化。

项目成果

Crossover interference: Just ZYP it.

交叉干扰：只需 ZYP 即可。

• DOI: http://dx.10.1073/pnas.2103433118
• 发表时间: 2021
• 期刊: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
• 影响因子: 11.1
• 作者: Crismani W

Crossover patterning in plants.

植物中的交叉图案。

• DOI: http://dx.10.1007/s00497-022-00445-4
• 发表时间: 2023
• 期刊: Plant reproduction
• 影响因子: 3.4
• 作者: Lloyd A

Meiosis in allopolyploid Arabidopsis suecica.

异源多倍体拟南芥减数分裂。

• DOI: http://dx.10.1111/tpj.15879
• 发表时间: 2022-08
• 期刊: for cell and molecular biology
• 作者: Nibau, Candida;Gonzalo, Adrian;Evans, Aled;Sweet-Jones, William;Phillips, Dylan;Lloyd, Andrew
• 通讯作者: Lloyd, Andrew