TRANSPLANT · Regulation of transposable elements in plants and impact on genome evolution
FP7 — People (Marie Curie Actions)
- Duration
- 2011-03-15 → 2014-03-14
- EU contribution
- €45,000
- Participants
- 1
- Scheme
- MC-ERG
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
Regulation of transposable elements in plants and impact on genome evolution
The objective of the project was the study the impact of MITEs in the regulation of nearby genes and to analyse their possible role as genome organiser elements. To this end, the project proposed to start applying dedicated bioinformatic tools to complete the Arabidopsis MITE landscape, and to analyse the epigenetic marks associated to these elements. In a second stage the project proposed to analyse their influence on the expression of neighbouring genes as well as to analyse the possible role of selected MITE families as genome organisers. During these first months, and as planned in the project, we have concentrated the efforts in developing bioinformatics tools and using these tools to refine the annotation of MITEs in the genome of Arabidopsis, as well as in starting to analyse the epigenetic marks associated to these transposable elements. In the upcoming weeks, we will start analysing by bisulfite sequencing the level of methylation associated to selected MITEs in order to confirm the bioinformatics data that we have collected until now.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
Transposable elements (TEs) are mobile genetic elements present in virtually all genomes. They make up nearly half of the total amount of DNA in plant genomes, so definition of their influence on genome structure and gene expression is of clear significance to the understanding of global genome regulation and phenotype variations. The movement of TEs within genomes can generate mutations by interrupting or modifying the regulation or the coding capacity of genes, and recombination between transposon copies located at different chromosomal regions can generate chromosomal rearrangements. Work done over the last few years has confirmed that TEs are at the origin of an important number of genes and regulatory sequences and that transposition has been essential for the evolution of complex genomes. They also have an important role in chromatin structure and function. Miniature Inverted Repeat Transposable Elements (MITEs) constitute a particular type of mobile elements that are present in high copy numbers in genomes. The objective of the project is to study the impact of MITEs in the regulation of nearby genes and to analyze their possible role as genome organizer elements. To this end, we will start applying dedicated bioinformatic tools to complete the Arabidopsis MITE landscape, and we will analyze the epigenetic marks associated to these elements. In a second stage of the project we will analyze their influence on the expression of neighboring genes taking advantage of the variability of MITE insertions in different Arabidopsis ecotypes. Finally, we will analyze the possible role of selected MITE families as genome organizers, by studying their localization in chromosomes by fluorescent in situ hybridization (FISH) analysis and by chromosome conformation capture approaches. In conclusion, this project constitutes an exciting combination of bioinformatics and cellular and molecular biology approaches for the analysis of genome structure and regulation via TEs.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- CENTRE DE RECERCA EN AGRIGENOMICA CSIC-IRTA-UAB-UB · CERDANYOLA DEL VALLESCoordinatorSpain
Links
Data: CORDIS, © European Union