Genomic diversity in Brachypodium; a tool to investigate the genetic architecture of energy, growth and fitness traits
Date
Tuesday 24 May 2016
Time
12:30-13:30
Venue
CSIRO Black Mountain B1 Lecture Theatre
Speaker
Dr. Pip Wilson (PEB, ANU, Canberra, Australia).
Synopsis
Brachypodium distachyon plants are used to decipher genetic determinants of plant growth and fitness.
Brachypodium distachyon is a recently emerged model species for temperate C3 monocot crops. The geographic range of B. distachyon covers a broad spectrum of climatic regions; including hot arid deserts, alpine and temperate climates. As such, a wide diversity of life strategies, plant architecture and stress tolerance mechanisms have evolved and been selected for over time. Genome wide association studies (GWAS) allow us to use this diversity to investigate the genetic architecture of traits of interest. Once causative loci are identified, candidate genes can be further investigate or QTLs used for breeding programs. However population structure must be taken into account when selecting a natural diversity set for GWAS to reduce the occurrence of false positive results. By performing genotyping by sequencing (GBS) on a large number of accessions from around the world we have selected a balanced subset for GWAS analysis. We phenotyped this GWAS set for agriculturally relevant traits such as early vigour components, flowering time and energy traits across contrasting variable climatic conditions using our dynamic climate chambers. This allowed us to investigate how the genetic architecture of traits changes in response to the growth environment. We can then identify causative alleles that are important across environments and ones that are key to trait expression in a specific environment.
Speaker bio
Dr Pip Wilson’s primary interest is in improving the yield and drought tolerance of agricultural species. In particular she is interested in applying knowledge gained from molecular and physiological studies to improving yields in the field. Dr Pip Wilson obtained her BSc (Advanced) from Sydney University, completing her honours at ANU under the supervision of Professor Barry Pogson, which looked at systemic signalling of high light stress in Arabidopsis. Pip obtained her PhD in the same group, focussing on the positional cloning, and molecular and physiological characterisation of the water stress tolerant Arabidopsis mutant, alx8. Following completion of her PhD, Pip has held Postdoctoral Fellowships at both the ANU and CSIRO, primarily focussing on traits that confer tolerance to drought stress in cereal crops such as rice and wheat, and more recently Brachypodium. This research has incorporated the fields of crop physiology, genomics, bioinformatics, phenomics and molecular biology.
This is a public seminar.
No visitor pass is required for non-CSIRO attendees going to Lecture Theatre Building 1.