From left to right: Carolin Seyfferth, Nathaniel Street, Xiao-Ru Wang and Hannele Tuominen; photo: Anne Honsel
Last week, Formas announced the decision for their annual open calls. Four projects affiliated with UPSC got granted. Carolin Seyfferth, postdoc in Hannele Tuominen’s group, received a mobility starting grant and the group leaders Nathaniel Street, Hannele Tuominen and Xiao-Ru Wang got funding for their research and development projects. All four projects focus on tree research.
Carolin Seyfferth will use her funding to search for genes that control chemical and physical wood properties like the content of cellulose and lignin, the density or the stiffness of the wood. She will use samples that were collected from aspen trees grown at different locations in Sweden. By comparing their genetic and transcriptomic differences with their biochemical wood properties, she hopes to find marker genes or gene networks that regulate respective wood properties. The mobility starting grant offers her to visit other labs with special expertise and resources that will help validating the most interesting gene sets.
Nathaniel Street will use data from the same collection of aspen trees as Carolin Seyfferth but he will focus on compounds that are produced by the trees for example to defend themselves against animal or fungi attacks. He wants to identify the genes that control the production of those compounds. Many of these compounds are of medicinal or commercial value and may also have an impact on the diverse communities of bacteria and fungi that are growing together with the tree in a beneficial way. To understand how the production of those compounds is controlled and can be reengineered will open up new possibilities for commercial forestry.
The project of Hannele Tuominen has the purpose to identify aspen genes that control tree features interesting for bioenergy or biofuel production. She will focus on a wide range of features including biomass production, wood chemistry and pathogen resistance. By comparing the genetic setup of a collection of different aspen variants, she wants to select marker genes that might help improve breeding for certain desired features. The best variants from the characterised collection can be directly used for example for short-rotation plantations of aspen that are used already now for bioenergy or biofuel production.
Xiao-Ru Wang, group leader at the Department of Ecology and Environmental Sciences and affiliated with UPSC, will work with another tree species, Scots pine. Her goal is to evaluate the genetic diversity in natural stands, breeding populations and production seed orchard crops in Sweden. She will compare the genetic variation in Scandinavia populations with other populations across the whole distribution range to understand the evolutionary history of Scots pine in Scandinavia, and how much of that diversity is captured in the breeding program for seedling production. This assessment will help to optimize current forest management for future challenges.
Link to the announcement from Formas:
http://www.formas.se/en/Press-News/News/Given-decisions-November-2018/
The projects:
Carolin Seyfferth (Mobility grant):
Title: Regulation of wood properties in aspen and birch through large-scale gene expression studies
Nathanial Street (Research and development project grants):
Title: Engineering specialised metabolism in aspen
Hannele Tuominen (Research and development project grants):
Title: Harnessing natural variation in aspen for forest feedstock improvement
Xiao-Ru Wang (Research and development project grants):
Title: Genetic diversity in Swedish conifer forests: are there reasons for concern?
For more information contact the project leader or have a look on their homepage:
Carolin Seyfferth
Umeå Plant Science Centre
Department of Plant Physiology
Umeå University
e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Nathaniel Street
Umeå Plant Science Centre
Department of Plant Physiology
Umeå University
Phone: +46 (0)90 786 5473
e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
www.upsc.se/nathaniel_street
Hannele Tuominen
Umeå Plant Science Centre
Department of Plant Physiology
Umeå University
Phone: +46 (0)90 786 9693
e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
www.upsc.se/hannele_tuominen
Xiao-Ru Wang
Department of Ecology and Environmental Sciences
Umeå University
Phone: +46 90 786 99 55
Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
https://www.upsc.se/xiao-ru_wang
http://www.emg.umu.se/english/about-the-department/staff/wang-xiao-ru/
