DEPARTMENT OF HORTICULTURE

AND LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE

Seminar/Discussion
Faculty Candidate - Plant Responses to the Environment position

Alison Liu
Principle Investigator & Research Assistant Professor, Department of Biochemistry and Cell
Biology, Stony Brook Univ.

Using whole epigenome-sequencing approach to identify biological networks

affected by climate change conditions in Arabidopsis thaliana
Both elevated atmospheric CO2 and temperature resulting from human activities have been
shown to affect plant growth, development, and gene expression, and can have significant
impact on crop production and ecosystem stability. The rapid response and adaption of plants
to environmental stress involves complex biological processes engaging both proteins and the
genome. The epigenome is characterized by being plastic and heritable, and microRNAs
(miRNAs) are extremely responsive to environmental changes and often target transcription
factors in developmental pathway; thus both might play essential roles in plant acclimation and
adaptation to climate change. Using Arabidopsis plants as a model system, we investigated how
elevated CO2 and temperature in the range that are predicted to occur at the end of century
modify gene expression by acting through miRNAs and genomic DNA methylation, and how these
changes subsequently influence the dynamics of regulatory networks, and ultimately plant
phenotypes. In this seminar, I will first focus on the question: what are the roles that miRNAs
and their controlled regulatory networks played in plant response to these climate conditions?
Using small RNA- and RNA sequencing methods, I have identified four functional groups of
miRNAs affected by these conditions in regulating flowering time, auxin-regulated cellular
proliferation and differentiation, stress responses, and potential cell wall biosynthesis. I will
specifically talk about the effect of elevated CO2 (or sugar) on plant flowering time through a
miR156/157-controlled flowering time regulatory network. In the second part of my talk, I will
discuss my most recent work about the CO2-regulation of genomic DNA methylation and its
potential impact on important plant functions in stomata, respiration, carbohydrate metabolism,
signal transduction, and disease resistance. Finally, I discuss some research directions I plan to
explore in my future work.

Tuesday, May 19, 2015

9:30 11:00 AM
HORT 222