| 英文摘要: | This project will create a database of the molecular basis of self-incompatibility systems in flowering plants. Genetic mechanisms that prevent self-fertilization are common in flowering plants. The distribution, causes, and consequences of these systems remain deeply controversial and are poorly known. A single genetic mechanism is likely ancestral to the group of flowering plants that makes up the majority of species, and that mechanism appears to strongly affect the origin and persistence of species. Although the molecular details are partly known, the current understanding is limited by the availability of data. This project aims to systematically unify diverse sources of data, as well as expand the understanding of history, molecular causes, and consequences of self-incompatibility systems. The resulting database will be of considerable use to a variety of fields from plant breeding, horticulture and restoration ecology to basic plant molecular biology.
This project will: (1) collect the scattered data on the distribution of self-incompatibility across core eudicots and publish it as an important shared community resource for biologists and laypersons, and (2) sequence reproductive tissue transcriptomes (mRNA) and characterize the expression of candidate genes involved in a particular kind of (RNase-based) self-incompatibility. Together, this will allow examination of the weight of evidence supporting the extent of shared ancestry of these widespread genetic mechanisms, which prevent self-fertilization and profoundly affect the fate of flowering plant species. |