The team also aims to determine to what extent the protein content of a given cell, tissue or organ predicts observable traits, or phenotype, of the plant – which will be of great interest to commercial plant breeders. “Our project seeks to use the model plant, Arabidopsis thaliana, to answer fundamental questions about the control of protein expression, including which mechanisms are important, and how they interact in a complex multi-cellular organism.” There are many levels at which this process is regulated and there are still many gaps in our knowledge. “For cells to work efficiently, proteins need to be produced in the right place, at the right time and in the right amount, and removed when no longer needed. Changes to the proteins in plant cells can have huge implications, affecting a cell’s size or role, and altering the plant’s nutritional value or response to environment changes. “Plants are constantly producing, using and recycling proteins. She said: “This project provides a fantastic opportunity to tackle the important question of how plant proteins are regulated. Project lead Professor Freddie Theodoulou said despite it being more than six decades since Francis Crick proposed his Central Dogma of molecular biology - which states that information flows from DNA to RNA to protein - scientists still don’t fully understand how this process is controlled. Protein regulation underpins many important agricultural traits with the two so-called ‘green revolutions’ - which resulted from the development of dwarf wheat and flood-tolerant rice varieties - being prime examples. DOI: 10.1371/ is to lead one of four UK consortia awarded a total of £14M to explore the fundamental biology of living systems, with the project set to be the biggest study into protein regulation ever attempted.Īlso involving University College London and the University of Cambridge, the BBSRC-funded project will use ‘-omic’ technologies and Big Data analysis to decipher the rules governing the regulation of protein abundance in plants. A multiparent advanced generation inter-cross to fine-map quantitative traits in Arabidopsis thaliana. The genetic basis of natural variation in seed size and seed number and their trade-off using Arabidopsis thaliana MAGIC lines. Highlighted paper: Gnan, Priest and Kover.
#Arabidopsis magic lines software#
A set of digital tools, hosted at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics, contains the (open source) software needed to run the QTL analysis and the data files associated with the lines. All lines in the 2009 paper are available from NASC. The MAGIC lines are an incredible open resource for studying natural variation in Arabidopsis: they enable a researcher to map a trait to within 300kb. The original MAGIC paper from 2009 paper states ‘MAGIC lines occupy an intermediate niche between naturally occurring accessions and existing synthetic populations.’ This pedigree means they represent a large diversity of genes in mostly homozygous lines ideal for accurate QTL mapping. The lines are recombinant, inbred over 6 generations, that originate from an intermated hereogenous stock. Kover and others developed these lines to improve methods of identifying natural allelic variation that underlies variable phenotypic traits. identify five potential genes that underlie quantitative variation in seed size and number: AAP1 (AT1G58360) and KLUH (AT1G13710) on chromosome 1 and JAGGED LATERAL ORGANS (AT4G00220), YABBY 3 (AT4G00180), and BEL1 (AT5G41410) on chromosomes 4 and 5.Īll the above work was carried out using Mulitparent Advanced Generation Inter-Cross (MAGIC) Arabidopsis lines. Here too there was only 1 QTL overlapping between the two traits, suggesting that any correlation is not inherent and may vary according to environmental or internal factors.īased on QTL analysis, Kover et al. There is enough of a positive correlation between seed number and fruit length that fruit length is sometimes used to estimate seed number – though the correlation is not strong.
The strong negative correlation seen in size and number is logically due to resource use efficiency, but these data suggest that this is not determined genetically.
Īll plants negotiate a trade-off between the number and size of their seeds, so it was a surprise to learn that of 9 QTL for seed number and 8 for seed size, there was only 1 overlapping QTL. Lead author Paula Kover and her team investigated the genetic basis of variation in seed size and number. In the Arabidopsis Research Round-up a few weeks ago, Lisa highlighted a paper from a team at the University of Bath about natural variation in Arabidopsis seeds. The research: Finding the causes of variation in seed size and number