NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship in Biology: Elucidating the Cellular and Molecular Dynamics behind Nectary Development in Aquilegia

Gong, Yan, Berkeley CA

Investigators

Abstract

This action funds an NSF Plant Genome Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology for FY 2023. The fellowship supports a research and training plan in a host laboratory for the Fellow who also presents a plan to broaden participation in biology. The title of the research and training plan for this fellowship to Dr. Yan Gong is "Elucidating the Cellular and Molecular Dynamics behind Nectary Development in Aquilegia" The host institution for the fellowship is Harvard University, and the sponsoring scientist is Dr. Elena M. Kramer. Nectar is a central bridge between flowering plants and pollinators. The consumption of nectar and the subsequent transfer of pollen by pollinators are vital to the reproductive success of most flowering plants. Nearly 90% of all flowering plants and 76% of domestic crops benefit from such plant-pollinator interactions. Nectar is produced by nectaries, specialized cellular structures that are thought to have evolved multiple times independently. The evolution of nectaries significantly boosted genetic diversity, accelerated speciation, and expanded the habitats of these lineages. Despite nectaries' physiological, agricultural, and ecological importance, our understanding of nectary development is limited to a small subset of flowering plants. This project will address this challenge by investigating the genetic control behind nectary development in basal eudicot species of Aquilegia, with the hope of discovering genetic traits that can be engineered to reduce single pollinator dependence in crops, an urgent issue worsened by climate change. The Fellow will receive training in single-cell genomics, development, and evolutionary biology from this project. To facilitate scientific communication on this topic and promote community participation, the Fellow will organize a mini-symposium on this topic and mentor students performing scientific research. This project focuses on physiologically, agriculturally, and ecologically important plant tissue - the nectary - and aims to elucidate the cellular and molecular mechanisms responsible for nectary formation and nectar production. Specific aims are to 1) profile the nectary gene expression network by single-cell RNA sequencing and elucidate the genetic circuits underlying nectar production and secretion in Aquilegia; and 2) examine how different Aquilegia species adjust the nectar sugar composition to attract different pollinators. The combination of cutting-edge functional genomics methods and comparative evo-devo approaches will not only fill the gaps in our knowledge about the genetic basis of nectary development but also offer insights into the evolution of nectaries and their regulatory networks. The single-cell transcriptome datasets and plant genetic material generated from this project will be available to the public through various community resource-sharing websites. Keywords: nectary development, plant-pollinator interactions, single-cell RNA sequencing. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.