Quantitative and contextual modelling of transcriptional responses to auxin

生长素转录反应的定量和情境建模

• 批准号: BB/F008511/1
• 负责人: John King
• 金额: $ 13.45万
• 依托单位: University of Nottingham
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2008
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2008 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=BB%2FF008511%2F1
• 关键词: Quantitative; contextual; modelling; transcriptional; responses

Auxin is a plant hormone that plays an important role in many, very different aspects of plant growth and development. For example, on one hand auxin regulates the pattern in which leaves emerge from the growing shoot tip, while on the other it mediates environmental responses such as the bending growth observed in shoots growing towards a light source. Because auxin is integral to so much of plant development, a knowledge of how auxin works is absolutely fundamental to our ability both to understand how plants grow and to improve important crop traits. Although it is unclear how auxin, a small and simple molecule, is able to regulate such a diversity of processes, it is known that changes in gene expression are important and that several hundred genes are either turned on or off in response to auxin. Work from several labs has established a network of signalling proteins whose complex interactions translate increases in auxin levels within a cell into gene expression changes. However, this model of auxin signalling is generic and contains several gaps which mean that in most cases it offers only a theoretical basis for understanding how auxin operates throughout the plant. We can identify the new information required to remedy this situation and with this work we intend to use newly available techniques to obtain these data and correct the deficiencies of the current model. The complexity of the interactions in this auxin response system mean that the data that describe it are similarly complex, and therefore we need to adopt a new approach for analysing the information that we will gather in which we build mathematical models that describe the functioning of the system. These models can then be used to test our predictions of how the auxin response system works, generate new hypotheses about its functioning, and ultimately tell us if we have understood its essential details. This higher level of understanding of auxin action will be useful to a number of groups, including plant biologists, crop scientists, and scientists studying similarly complex signalling mechanisms in other organisms.

生长素是一种植物激素，在植物生长和发育的许多，非常不同的方面起着重要作用。例如，一方面，生长素调节了生长的芽尖端出现的模式，而另一方面，它介导了环境反应，例如在芽中观察到的弯曲生长朝向光源。由于生长素是如此大部分植物开发不可或缺，因此了解生长素的工作原理绝对是我们了解植物如何生长和改善重要作物特征的能力。尽管尚不清楚生长素（一个小而简单的分子）如何能够调节这种过程的多样性，但众所周知，基因表达的变化很重要，并且要响应生长素而打开或关闭数百个基因。来自多个实验室的工作已经建立了一个信号蛋白网络，其复杂的相互作用将细胞内的生长素水平的增加转化为基因表达变化。但是，这种生长素信号的模型是通用的，并且包含几个差距，这意味着在大多数情况下，它仅提供理论基础，用于了解生长素在整个工厂中的运作方式。我们可以确定纠正这种情况所需的新信息，并且通过这项工作，我们打算使用新的可用技术来获取这些数据并纠正当前模型的缺陷。在这种生长素响应系统中，相互作用的复杂性意味着描述它的数据同样复杂，因此我们需要采用一种新方法来分析我们将收集的信息，在该信息中我们将构建描述系统功能的数学模型。然后，这些模型可用于测试我们对生长素响应系统如何工作的预测，生成有关其功能的新假设，并最终告诉我们我们是否了解了其基本细节。对生长素作用的这种更高水平的理解将对许多群体，包括植物生物学家，作物科学家以及研究其他生物体中类似复杂的信号机制的科学家。