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DFG Research Unit “Innovation and Coevolution in Plant Sexual Reproduction” (ICIPS) will be funded for another four years
The Research Unit “Innovation and Coevolution in Plant Sexual Reproduction” (ICIPS) that is coordinated at Justus Liebig University Giessen will continue to investigate the evolution of molecular communication in the reproduction of land plants. The German Research Foundation (DFG) announced on Friday further funding of the second phase of the Research Unit (FOR 5098). This fundamental research is also important for our nutrition as well as for our understanding of ecosystems. In ICIPS eight research teams at a total of six German universities will collaborate.
When plants conquered the mainland around 480 million years ago, they had to develop new mechanisms, for example, to bring together sperm with egg cells and to protect them from drying out. New reproductive organs emerged during land plant evolution, such as ovules and carpels. Previously, reproductive cells could simply be released into the aqueous medium, where fertilization took place. Research in ICIPS focuses on how molecular communication pathways between and within the reproductive organs changed when plants moved onto land. These new signaling pathways serve, for example, to lure sperm to egg cells or to control fertilization.
“In the second funding phase, our Research Unit will compare the development of new organs, signaling molecules, and communication pathways in the reproduction of mosses, ferns, and two flowering plant species,” says Professor Annette Becker. “Examples of our topics include the evolution of sperm cells in land plants and the central role of sperm and egg cells finding each other through the growth of pollen tubes, and the origin of seeds,” adds the plant scientist. "Because we mainly eat products made from seeds and fruits, our fundamental research into plant reproduction has the potential to optimize plant breeding and thus human nutrition. Our understanding of interactions in terrestrial ecosystems could also improve significantly.”
As became apparent during the first funding phase, some of the molecular regulatory processes may have existed even before the traits developed whose expression they control. For further analysis, the tools and methods developed in the first funding phase can be used, such as stable markers in the moss Physcomitrium patens for measuring reactive oxygen species (ROS), genome editing and stable transformations of the fern Ceratopteris richardii. The aim is to combine cell biology with developmental biology and bioinformatics methods and to compare reproduction in the moss Physcomiterium patens, the liverwort Marchantia polymorpha, the fern Ceratopteris richardii, the crop maize (Zea mays), and the genetic model organism Arabidopsis thaliana. For example, researchers will investigate how microRNA developed new functions in gene regulating networks in the course of plant evolution.
The coevolution of reproductive organs and communication systems, such as signal peptides, small RNAs, and their target genes, as well as the balance and signaling effects of ROSs and transcription factors, are also topics of the second funding phase.
Since 2021 ICIPS analyses gene regulatory networks and signalling molecules now with eight working groups at six German universities. Therefore the Research Unit continues to cooperate with the DFG Priority Program MAdLand (Molecular Adaptation to Land: Evolutionary Adaptation of Plants to Change), with spokesperson Prof. Dr. Jan de Vries from Georg August University Göttingen, and the Open Green Genomes Initiative (University of Georgia, Athens GA, USA) with spokesperson Prof. Dr. Jim Leebens-Mack.
Prof. Dr. Annette Becker, Institute for Botany
Evolutionary developmental biology of plants
Phone: ++49 641-99-35200
E-mail: annette.becker@bot1.bio.uni-giessen.de
Drawing conclusions on the evolution several million years ago: Spore formation in the moss Physcomi ...
Quelle: Melanie Trupp
At the stereo microscope Melanie Trupp analyzes the reproductive organs of the amphibious moss Ricci ...
Quelle: Nora Gutsche
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