Conservation and diversity in transcriptional regulation of developmental processes in crop and model plant species (CISCODE) (ERA-PG 024)

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Jan Lohmann
• Subject Area: Plant Genetics and Genomics
• Term: from 2007 to 2011
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 35878957

This project will use genomics technologies in a comparative context to harness the information present in the diversity of species to fill in the gaps in our understanding of model and crop plants. We will focus on a fundamental, economically important and experimentally tractable biological system, plant reproduction, and use genomic and post-genomic tools to model and manipulate the regulatory network at the centre of the reproductive process. Using a comparative approach, we aim to understand how evolutionary variation in non-coding DNA regions has led to variation in reproductive processes in (crop) species. To derive maximum benefit from a broad comparative analysis, we will focus on a key set of genetic interactions characterised in depth in the reference species, Arabidopsis. Our final aim of this project is to achieve an understanding of the cis-regulatory elements controlling reproduction in plants, to understand the evolutionary variation in this network and to benefit from this information to predictably manipulate the system.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants