Project Number: 6402-21310-003-08
Project Type: Specific Cooperative Agreement

Start Date: Sep 26, 2007
End Date: Sep 26, 2012

Objective:
Identify and characterize genes/proteins underlying drought and heat stress responses in cotton with emphasis on underexplored tissues (specifically, seeds, anthers, and roots); define proteins and gene pathways involved in cellulose synthesis and fiber elongation in cotton; describe protein phosphorylation patterns in cotton fibers as a means of associating post-translational modifications with cellulose synthesis; categorize gene expression patterns associated with infection of cotton roots as a means of identifying genetic pathways that can be targeted in reinform nematode control; conduct functional annotation of the genomes of cotton and reinform nemaode; and continue major role in sequencing and comparative genomic analysis of the cotton genome.

Approach:
Identify differentially-expressed nRNA and proteins in mature anthers, seeds, and roots in plants grown under temperature and/or drought stress using high-throughput expression proteomics, nucleic acids sequencing technologies, and computational biology approaches; identify proteins involved in cellulose biosynthesis and cotton fiber elongation by integrating transcriptomics and proteomics/phosphoproteomics techniqies awith computational systems biology network modeling; assemble and structurally annotate the sequence of the reinform nematode genome using computational techniques; use transcriptonics approaches (high-throughput DNA sequencing and computational methods) to study how gene expression changes as reniform nematode females move from free-living to parasitic habits; functionally annotate the cotton and reniform nematode genomes using Gene Ontology (CO) methodology; and continue to explore means to keep MSU at the leading edge of cotton genomics research.