This action funds an NSF National Plant Genome Initiative Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology for FY 2013. The fellowship supports a research and training plan in a host laboratory for the Fellow who also presents a plan to broaden participation in biology. The title of the research and training plan for this fellowship to Julie Thomas is "Analysis of Alternative Splicing in Drought Regulated Genes for Stress Tolerance in Rice". The host institution for the fellowship is the University of Arkansas and the sponsoring scientist is Dr. Andy Pereira.
Alternative splicing forms multiple transcripts from individual genes that can generate very rapid changes in functional transcripts by post-transcriptional processing to help the plant respond to environmental stresses. The objectives of this project are: 1) analysis of alternative splicing in rice in response to drought stress using RNA-Seq; 2) new developments in RNA-Seq technology and Bioinformatics will be used to identify stress responsive differentially expressed alternatively spliced transcripts; and, 3) evaluation of alternatively spliced transcripts in a rice genotype diversity panel, to study the association to drought stress response phenotypes or stress parameters. Alternatively spliced transcripts that distinguish drought tolerance can be developed as functional markers for molecular breeding.
Training objectives include bioinformatics, crop plant genomics, drought physiology, and molecular breeding approaches. Broader impacts include enhancement of the capacity for conducting interdisciplinary research in plant improvement and associated sciences such as bioinformatics, physiology, genomics and molecular breeding. The project will also address a major problem of climate change, the response of plants to changing environments in which drought and other abiotic stresses are becoming more frequent. An understanding of how water scarcity affects crop yields would be a major contribution towards making crops more tolerant to drought stress.
