This action funds an NSF National Plant Genome Initiative Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology for FY 2019. 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 Rose Marks is "Leveraging Natural Variation to Understand Desiccation Tolerance in the Resurrection Plant Myrothamnus flabellifolia". The host institutions for the fellowship are Michigan State University and the University of Cape Town (South Africa) and the sponsoring scientists are Drs. Robert VanBuren and Jill Farrant.
Plants are threatened by global change, increasing variability in weather patterns, and associated abiotic stress. Water shortage, in particular, is a primary cause of agricultural loss. In order to improve food security, it is critical that strategies and new technologies be developed to enhance water-stress tolerance in crops. This research project is based on the premise that naturally stress tolerant plants comprise a rich source of information that can be mined for crop improvement and bioengineering efforts. The goal of the project is to comprehensively characterize the genetic, physiological, and ecological mechanisms of tolerance in the extremely drought tolerant resurrection plant M. flabellifolia. Broader impacts with respect to training and mentoring include developing an international mentorship program in which students from both Michigan State University and the University of Cape Town (UCT) will collaborate in research activities under the guidance of the Fellow. Outreach activities include a plan to increase cultural awareness and engage local communities in the societal benefits of cultivating M. flabellifolia for its secondary compounds of use in medicinal and cosmetic applications. Training objectives include acquiring expertise in plant physiology, biochemistry, genomics, ecology and quantitative genetics.
Desiccation tolerance is a form of drought tolerance that enables tissues to recover from extreme drying (i.e., below an absolute water content of -100 MPa). Filling knowledge gaps in our understanding of desiccation tolerance is an important step towards preventing drought induced losses and ensuring global food security. The overall goal of this project is to provide new insight into the cellular, molecular and physiological mechanisms that underpin desiccation tolerance. Specific aims include: 1) establishing a desiccation tolerance diversity panel in the unique and understudied resurrection plant Myrothamnus flabellifolia; 2) characterizing phenotypic differences in desiccation tolerance among M. flabellifolia populations occurring along an extreme water availability gradient; 3) characterizing photosynthetic responses to desiccation and protective secondary metabolites to provide insight into the cellular and molecular basis for variability in desiccation tolerance; and 4) generating sequence resources for M. flabellifolia through transcriptome and genome sequencing for use in identifying target loci for variation in drought response via eQTL association mapping. All sequence data generated during the project will be made available in the NCBI Short Read Archive (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sra/) for archiving. All germplasm generated and/or used for these studies will be maintained and stored at UCT and made available upon request. Voucher specimens will be submitted to the Bolus Herbarium (www.bolus.uct.ac.za/) (South Africa). In addition, experimental results generated from this project will be deposited at the Figshare data repository (https://digitalscience.figshare.com/) and disseminated through journal publications and presentations at scientific meetings.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
