PLEASE NOTE: Application deadline date 08 Jan 2024. Applications are no longer being accepted for this project
Project Overview
This project directly addresses the impact of climate change on food security. It will investigate how wheat plants respond to high temperature and drought using lines with altered levels of regulators of these responses. Results will be used to help develop wheat varieties that are more resilient to climate change.
Project Description
A major consequence of climate change is that crop plants will need to cope with increased temperatures and drought which directly affects crop yield (1). It is estimated that for every 1°C increase in global temperature, wheat yields will be reduced by >5% (2). This is a major problem as wheat provides about 20% of all calories and proteins for the human diet (www.fao.org/faostat). We have been investigating how wheat responds to its environment through the Phytochrome Interacting Factor (PIF) family of regulators, which are proposed as targets of genes responsible for the Green Revolution. Manipulation of PIF gene expression will allow us to understand and improve the response of wheat to temperature and drought. For example, in Arabidopsis the PIF4 gene plays a critical role in regulating growth in response to temperature (3). We have identified mutants in three wheat PIF genes, including two closely related to Arabidopsis PIF4, and have also constructed two wheat PIF overexpressing lines. The aim of this project is to test whether these lines show altered responses to drought and increased temperatures and to characterize these responses both physiologically and through gene expression analysis. We will also use CRISPR-Cas9 technology to identify additional PIF mutants and to produce stacked mutants lacking multiple PIF genes. This will allow us to build a complete picture of the role of this gene family in response to a changing environment and to inform strategies to develop more climate-resilient crop varieties.
The INSPIRE DTP programme provides comprehensive personal and professional development training alongside extensive opportunities for students to expand their multi-disciplinary outlook through interactions with a wide network of academic, research and industrial/policy partners. The student will be registered at the University of Southampton and hosted at the School of Biological Sciences.
Specific training will include a broad understanding of wheat molecular genetics, environmental physiology, and molecular biology skills covering gene expression analysis using RNA sequencing and quantitative PCR, as well as undertaking genome editing in wheat. Molecular and physiological analyses of seedling responses will be primarily undertaken at the University of Southampton, while field experiments to gauge plant stress responses will be performed at Rothamsted Research.
The student will participate in weekly laboratory meetings to present results and discuss emerging ideas and have the opportunity to present their work more formally in seminars and at national and international meetings.
1. Wheeler & von Braun (2013) Climate change impacts on global food security. Science 341, 508-13.
2. Liu et al. (2016) Similar estimates of temperature impacts on global wheat yield by three independent methods. Nature Climate Change 6, 1130–1136.
3. Koini et al. (2009) High temperature-mediated adaptations in plant architecture require the bHLH transcription factor PIF4. Current Biology 19, 408–413.
