International Research Fellowship Program: Evolution of Nickel Hyper-accumulation in the Plant genus Stackhousia

Burge Dylan O, Chico CA

Investigators

Abstract

0965674 Burge The International Research Fellowship Program enables U.S. scientists and engineers to conduct nine to twenty-four months of research abroad. The program's awards provide opportunities for joint research, and the use of unique or complementary facilities, expertise and experimental conditions abroad. This award will support a twenty-four-month research fellowship by Dr. Dylan Burge to work with Dr. Balwant Singh at the University of Sydney in Australia, with Dr. Maurizio Rossetto at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Sydney, with Dr. Bill Barker at the State Herbarium of South Australia and with Dr. Loren Rieseberg at Indiana University in the US. Beginning with the origin of life itself, evolution has been characterized by adaptation to extreme environments. To gain understanding of organismal diversity and anticipate the response of living things to predicted perturbations in the global environment such as global warming, it is important to study extremes of adaptation. More than 320 species of flowering plants accumulate the element nickel in their tissues to levels exceeding 0.1%, concentrations that would be toxic to most organisms. This phenomenon, known as nickel hyper-accumulation, represents a unique adaptation to soils that are rich in nickel. Nickel hyper-accumulation is thought to have evolved independently in several plant lineages. Recent research has focused on ecology, genetics, and physiology of nickel hyper-accumulation, work that is motivated in part by the potential use of these plants for detoxification of nickel contaminated soils. In spite of this great interest, little is known about evolution of nickel hyper-accumulation in specific plant groups, hindering research on the evolution of this intriguing and extreme plant adaptation. This project will combine methods from soil science, ecology, population genetics, and genomics in a synergistic approach designed to elucidate how nickel hyper-accumulation has evolved in the Australian plant genus Stackhousia. The research will also develop Stackhousia as a model system for research on the evolution and genetics of Ni hyper-accumulation. Furthermore, the approach developed here will be applicable to other plant groups containing Ni hyper-accumulating species, leading to greater insight into the evolution of this intriguing trait, which appears to have developed independently at least 15 times during the diversification of flowering plants.