Guiding Crop Development: A Longstanding Human Endeavor <\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\nHumans have been guiding plants\u2019 genetic development based on their phenotypic traits for 10,000 years. For most of human history, plant breeding happened manually as farmers cross-bred their favorite plants. Over time, varieties emerged that were well-adapted to local growing conditions. The G2F collaboration is an extension of this long-honed cultivation effort. Today, as genome sequencing and computation techniques become increasingly accessible, researchers like Gage find themselves inundated with genetic data that lets them map plant traits to specific genes. It\u2019s exciting, he says, but also complicated.<\/p>\n\n\n
\u201cWe\u2019re talking about 30,000 genes in the [corn] genome that are all simultaneously tuning their levels up or down in response to dozens, hundreds, thousands of environmental stimuli,\u201d he notes. \u201cAll of those hundreds and thousands of genes have only a minute effect on the trait of interest. But cumulatively, they determine [the plant\u2019s] height or the weight of the kernels on an ear of corn,\u201d indicators that have a direct impact on farmers\u2019 bottom lines.<\/p>\n\n\nAn Image used to train machine learning models that identify individual leafs from aerial imagery. Models are being developed by Weilong He in Lirong Xiang's lab in the Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering to quantify leaf number, size, shape and orientation.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\nThe accumulation of gene-environment interactions has always been important to people who grow food, even if they couldn\u2019t say why those interactions occurred at the genetic level. By observing differences that surface between hybrids in a range of environmental settings, GxE research helps us elucidate why certain traits emerge in certain varieties, while others do not.<\/p>\n\n\n
Spotting patterns among the noise is part of why Gage loves his work. \u201cBeing the first person to see whatever patterns or findings fall out of a large dataset \u2014 that is thrilling.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n
Gene-Environment Interactions in a Range of Contexts<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\nGage acknowledges that it\u2019s unusual for the NIH to fund agricultural research \u2014 the agency typically invests in studies with more obvious applications in biomedical science and public health. But GxE is not limited to crop science. All living things, including humans, are subject to gene-environment interactions. While GxE could theoretically be studied in other model systems with more applicability to humans, research within controlled laboratory settings cannot reflect the same real-world complexity.<\/p>\n\n\n
\u201cWe made the case [to the NIH] that we can use crop species as a really good system to learn about molecular GxE because it has a lot of advantages that other systems don\u2019t,\u201d Gage says.<\/p>\n\n\nMembers of Joe Gage's, Rub\u00e9n Rell\u00e1n-\u00c1lvarez's and Josh Strable's lab groups sampling tissue in a Genomes2Fields trial<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\nPlants can be grown in places where they have economic importance and can be exposed to the same soil, water and weather conditions as their commercial counterparts. This enables GxE researchers to make more accurate assessments of how environmental stimuli influence gene regulation. Importantly, some of the mechanisms by which genes are turned \u201con\u201d or \u201coff\u201d are well-conserved across kingdoms, meaning the findings from this work may be generalizable beyond just plants.<\/p>\n\n\n
For this reason, the grant isn\u2019t limited to any individual species. Gage intends to eventually turn his attention to other crops as well.<\/p>\n\n\n
\u201cWheat, tobacco and sweetpotatoes \u2014 these are all important crops in North Carolina where gene-environment interactions are sometimes difficult to understand,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n
This work will lead to insights across multiple fields and applications in agriculture, including genetics and even bioengineering. Concretely, it addresses fundamental problems related to food security and climate adaptation and could inform improved crop breeding and production practices. Even more deeply, this research helps us understand at the genetic level how living organisms are coded to respond to varied, dynamic environments.<\/p>\n"},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Joe Gage from the Department of Crop and Soil Sciences will lead the NIH-funded Genomes2Fields Initiative to study the interplay between corn varieties and their environments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3872,"featured_media":394892,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"source":"","ncst_custom_author":"Kathleen Nay","ncst_show_custom_author":true,"ncst_dynamicHeaderBlockName":"ncst\/default-post-header","ncst_dynamicHeaderData":"{\"showAuthor\":true,\"showDate\":true,\"showFeaturedVideo\":false,\"caption\":\"Members of Joe Gage's lab join others from Rub\u00e9n Rell\u00e1n-\u00c1lvarez's and Josh Strable's lab groups in a large, coordinated effort to sample leaf tissue from roughly 1,500 genotypes with varying amounts of DNA derived from wild relatives of corn.\",\"displayCategoryID\":1163}","ncst_content_audit_freq":"","ncst_content_audit_date":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1792,1171,1633,1181,1163],"tags":[1863,1165],"_ncst_magazine_issue":[],"coauthors":[2630],"displayCategory":{"term_id":1163,"name":"Research","slug":"research","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":1163,"taxonomy":"category","description":"","parent":0,"count":684,"filter":"raw"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394881"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3872"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=394881"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394881\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":516398,"href":"https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394881\/revisions\/516398"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/394892"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=394881"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=394881"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=394881"},{"taxonomy":"_ncst_magazine_issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/_ncst_magazine_issue?post=394881"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=394881"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}