AUgmented REsilience After Transmission of Epimutations

Sessile organisms like plants must be prepared to deal with the full range of fluctuations in their environment. We only start to understand how plants regulate gene activities to help them cope with environmental stresses. This involves epigenetic regulation, which serves as a cellular memory. One prominent example of a developmental decision under epigenetic control is the fact that plants can remember for how long they have been exposed to cold in winter to coordinate flowering with spring. Similarly, plants that encountered environmental stress early during development will be more resilient to the same stress later, an adaptation called acclimation or priming. Many aspects of this epigenetic memory are not understood, and we will use the model plant Arabidopsis to study this phenomenon. We will apply heat and salt stress early during development and investigate gene activities and epigenetic changes at subsequent timepoints in leaves, stem cells, gametes and in the offspring. Investigating the very limited number of stem cells, eggs and sperm cells is possible with innovative techniques developed by partners at the Gregor Mendel Institute in Vienna and at the University of Zurich. This will be combined with analysis of genetic and epigenetic responses to heat and salt stress in Arabidopsis plants originating from different locations and adapted to different environments. This is done in collaboration with the partners at the Max Planck Institute of Developmental Biology in Tübingen, providing high quality full genome information of selected Arabidopsis strains from diverse and well-characterized geographic origins. This collaborative experimental set up allows to find out how environmental signals are converted into epigenetic memory and whether and how plant stem cells are processing and passing this information on to floral organs, gametes and eventually the next generation. We will use the results to test the hypothesis whether we can create more stress-resilient plants by directly targeting and modifying the plants epigenome. This will be done in collaboration with partners from the University of Warwick who use novel techniques to modulate the epigenetic memory of plants. In summary, with a series of novel techniques and the complementary expertise of the AUREATE consortium we will gain a deeper understanding of memory effects and their role during stress adaptation in plants. If modulating the epigenetic stress memory can produce more stress-resistance, without the need for genetic engineering, the results will also be informative and relevant for potential applications in crop species.

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