Participants: Jon Agren, Joanne Chory, Charles Fenster (PI), Thomas Hansen, Alexy Kondrashov, Stephen Mount, Matthew Rutter (coPI), Frank Shaw, Ruth Shaw, Stephen Tonsor, Gunter Wagner, Detlef Weigel
Spontaneous mutations are the source of new genetic variants, and are the raw material of evolutionary change. The outcomes of many evolutionary models depend upon the rate and expression of mutations. Because mutation is infrequent, measuring these parameters has been restricted to model organisms raised and assayed in large numbers in laboratory conditions. However, understanding how mutations interface with natural selection and other ecological features of the organism requires explicitly quantifying mutation rates and their effects in the wild or to specific environmental conditions that the organism is likely to encounter. An accurate description of the properties of the mutation process will provide important information about such topics as the rate of emergence of genetic disease and their likely severity, and the potential for detrimental mutations to lead to the decline and extinction of endangered species. Knowledge about the ways in which specific types of mutation interface with the environment may allow us to better use modern genetic techniques to improve crop performance or identify genes that may be especially likely to play a role in disease.
This FIBR Planning Grant will facilitate a collaborative project to investigate mutation properties on evolutionary processes in the plant Arabidopsis thaliana. We are a group of researchers whose expertise includes molecular and developmental genetics, theoretical genetics, and field-based experimental approaches to the study of plant evolution. A. thaliana is optimal for the study of mutational effects: it is the only genetic model organism that does not move, is large enough to easily observe in the wild, and widely distributed in natural populations. Thus, we can utilize predictive evolutionary models, cutting-edge molecular tools, established mutation accumulation lines, greenhouse and field experiments to connect alterations of the genetic code caused by mutation with subsequent changes in survival, reproductive success, and population-level evolutionary processes. The planning grant will fund two meetings (in spring and fall of 2003) that will define in detail the questions to be investigated. We will create a research plan that addresses important and feasible evolutionary questions that link molecular genetic and physiological information to the level of the whole organism. Furthermore, we will identify and recruit other researchers who would enhance the project. The outcome of these meetings and collaborations will be to prepare and submit a preliminary FIBR proposal in 2003.
