Global REPaIr

Climate change is one of the major constraints limiting plant growth and development worldwide. Crop production models foresee a reduction around 50–70% in the crop yields in the future, mostly due to climatic change. Plants exhibit diverse regulatory strategies to survive to changing environments. The non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs) are a class of RNAs regulating gene expression at both transcriptional and post-transcriptional levels. They are responsive to environmental cues (including plant interaction with surrounding microorganisms) and are generally involved in fine-tuning plant responses to these signals.

Acronym

Global-REPaIr

Description

Title: Molecular basis of the Regulation of the Environment-Plant Interactions at Global scale 

Global Objective: To understand the molecular basis of the plant-environment interactions at global scale in economically important crops

Abstract

Climate change is one of the major constraints limiting plant growth and development worldwide. Crop production models foresee a reduction around 50–70% in the crop yields in the future, mostly due to climatic change. Plants exhibit diverse regulatory strategies to survive to changing environments. The non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs) are a class of RNAs regulating gene expression at both transcriptional and post-transcriptional levels. They are responsive to environmental cues (including plant interaction with surrounding microorganisms) and are generally involved in fine-tuning plant responses to these signals. However, most of the knowledge generated about the regulation of the plant-environment interactions mediated by ncRNAs comes from studies in the model plants and very few ncRNA-related regulatory events related to the global response to environmental changes in crops have been studied in detail.

The exposed above, evidence that deciphering the mechanisms involved in the regulation of the interaction plant-environment emerge as one of the priorities for the improvement of crop yield in this worldwide scenario conditioned by both the climate change and the new European policies for the regulation of agricultural activity. To face with this emerging challenge we propose as the general objective of the Global-REPaIr Project, “Achieve a superior level in the knowledge of the regulation of the plant – environment interactions mediated by ncRNAs, at global scale”. This innovative strategy developed in economically relevant crops (melon and tomato) will allow, the generation of precise knowledge about the regulation of the plant-environment interplay to be used in traditional breeding for development of stress-tolerant plants.

To address this main objective we are planned four specific actions: 1) Characterize the mechanisms of regulation of the interaction crop-environment mediated by plant-endogenous tRNA-derived sRNAs and long non-coding transcripts, 2) Analyze the involvement of exogenous (fungi/bacteria-derived) sncRNAs in the cross-specie regulation of the plant-environment interaction, 3) Characterize in detail the specific role played by miR398 and miR408 in the regulation of the response to altered environments, and 4) Optimize the fluidic paper-based devices for detection of environment reactive tsRNAs. Global-REPaIr is focused to achieve the challenges described in the Strategic Action 6: “Food, bioeconomy, natural resources and environment”. We expected that our results can contribute in the follows aspects: i) The deep characterization of the role played by miR398/miR408 in the regulation of the plant – environment interactions will allow to determine their viability as characters to be included in breeding plans. ii) The Identification/characterization of sncRNAs involved in the cross talk plant-microorganisms will contribute to decipher, the manner in that plants regulates to- and interact with- the surrounding microbial ecosystem. iii) The Identification/characterization of tsRNAs, lncRNAs and circRNAs associated to the regulation of the plant response to changing environments might provide the knowledge necessary for the searching of novels resistance/tolerance characters involved in the crops adaptation to climate change. iv) The adaptation of the paper-based fluidic sensor technology to environment-reactive tsRNAs will offers an additional tool for the easy detection of the damage associated to adverse environments in crops.

Funders

Principal Researcher

Gustavo Gómez

Start date

01/09/2023

End date

31/08/2026