Project description:During maturation seeds acquire several physiological traits to enable them to survive drying and disseminate the species. Few studies have addressed the regulatory networks controlling acquisition of these traits at the tissue level particularly in endospermic seeds such as tomato, which matures in a fully hydrated environment and does not undergo maturation drying. Using temporal RNA-seq analyses of the different seed tissues during maturation, gene network and trait-based correlations were used to explore the transcriptome signatures and identify hubs associated with desiccation tolerance, longevity, germination under water stress and dormancy.
Project description:Because extreme environmental events are expected to increase with climate change, identifying candidate genes for stabilizing the protein composition of legume seeds or optimizing it in a given environment becomes increasingly important. To elucidate the genetic determinants of seed protein plasticity, major seed proteins from 200 ecotypes of Medicago truncatula grown in four contrasted environments were quantified after one-dimensional electrophoresis. Major protein bands were excised from the seed protein profile of five genotypes to identify protein variants.