Supervisor
Dr Natasha Yelina
Brief summary
The project uses chromosome engineering to interrogate meiotic crossover positioning along plant chromosomes.
Importance of Research
Crossover recombination underlies genetic diversity, evolution and crop breeding. The proposed research aims to gain essential knowledge to enable crossover engineering for accelerated crop improvement.
Project Summary
During meiosis parental chromosomes physically exchange parts or undergo crossover recombination. This fundamental process in all sexually reproducing eukaryotes creates genetic diversity and underlies evolution and breeding. In crops, new trait combinations that occur due to recombination are selected by breeders to create improved varieties.
Recombination can limit breeding because some parts of chromosomes are more amenable to crossovers than others. This project aims to understand whether chromosomal locus or location determines crossover positioning in plants. This knowledge will be an important step towards solving a fundamental mystery in biology and enabling breeders to bring together or separate crop traits of their choice through engineered recombination. The project is, therefore, an essential step towards faster crop breeding technologies and improved crop productivity.
What will the successful applicant do?
In collaboration with a leading chromosome engineering lab in Germany, we have generated chromosome inversion lines in a model Arabidopsis. Epigenetics controls recombination, therefore, the first step in the project will be to test whether chromosome inversions have affected the epigenomes. The second step will be to test whether the inversions have affected crossover recombination at the fine- and chromosome-wide resolution scales.
References
Schmidt, C., Fransz, P., Rönspies, M. et al. Changing local recombination patterns in Arabidopsis by CRISPR/Cas mediated chromosome engineering. Nat Commun 11, 4418 (2020). doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-18277-z
Alper, C.A., Larsen, C.E. (2017). Pedigree-Defined Haplotypes and Their Applications to Genetic Studies. In: Tiemann-Boege, I., Betancourt, A. (eds) Haplotyping. Methods in Molecular Biology, vol 1551. Humana Press, New York, NY. doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-6750-6_6
Yelina NE, Lambing C, Hardcastle TJ, Zhao X, Santos B, Henderson IR. DNA methylation epigenetically silences crossover hot spots and controls chromosomal domains of meiotic recombination in Arabidopsis. Genes Dev. 2015 Oct 15;29(20):2183-202. doi:10.1101/gad.270876.115. PMID: 26494791; PMCID: PMC4617981.