PI: Guiliang Tang (Michigan Technological University, Houghton)
CoPIs: Xuemei Chen and Wenbo Ma (University of California, Riverside), Harold N. Trick (Kansas State University), and Hairong Wei (Michigan Technological University, Houghton)
Key Collaborator: Kan Wang (Iowa State University)
Small RNAs, including microRNAs (miRNAs) and small interfering RNAs (siRNAs), play central roles in growth and development, epigenetics, genome integrity, defense against pathogen infection, and responses to environmental changes in plants. miRNAs are especially important in controlling plant development, productivity, and responses to biotic and abiotic stresses by negatively regulating gene expression at the post-transcriptional level. Hundreds to thousands of miRNAs have been identified from dozens of plant species. However, their roles in plant development and response against various pathogens and other stresses are largely unknown. This project will integrate the most recent cutting-edge genomics technology into the study of miRNAs in crop plants. Students at all levels of education will be engaged in a variety of activities including teaching, training, learning workshops, and technology-extension. The project will provide research training in small tandem target mimic (STTM) technology, rice transformation, and functional studies of miRNAs for postdoctoral associates, graduate and undergraduate students. Underrepresented minorities and women, as well as students from the Upper Peninsula region of Great Lakes, will be targeted and recruited. The project will also organize and hold a training workshop in STTM construction. The knowledge provided by this project will be disseminated to the public at large through informal talks at appropriate community venues.
This work will address key mechanistic hypotheses regarding miRNA evolution by answering important questions: Why do plants need so many miRNAs? Are they essential? What are their functional conservation and diversification in different plant lineages? This project will develop miRNA "knockdown" populations in selected agriculturally important crops as a pilot project using the recently developed STTM technology. These mutant populations will be further used to investigate the functional conservation and diversification of six highly conserved families of plant miRNAs, and to study the regulatory role of miRNAs in plant-microbe interactions. The project will provide a resource database, application and service for web-based materials transfer and distribution. All sequence data will be deposited at Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO). STTM constructs, STTM seeds of rice, maize, Arabidopsis and soybean for use in basic biology in plant science and crop improvement will be available upon request.
