Summary

Plants are fundamental to life on our planet.  It is generally acknowledged that global changes in temperature, rainfall, soil fertility and air quality are becoming a major problem for agriculture and the provision of natural resources.

It is a central scientific goal to understand the impact of these changes and how plants react to environmental change.
This requires studying natural variation among and within species, so that we can determine which flexibility plants express when coping with these challenges. This also includes effects that result from the interaction with pathogens and pests, as the distribution and evolution of a plant’s enemies is also affected by environmental change.

If we know which genes and molecules are essential to cope with new environments it becomes feasible to predict how plants will respond, paving the way for sustainable solutions to conserve earth’s biodiversity, as well as for innovations towards sustainable food production. 

The cluster Green Life Sciences aims to understand the origins and regulation of diversity at three levels (genomes, molecular signals and responses) underlying the flexibility of plants and their major pests and pathogens to changing environments.

The development of sustainable strategies for crop and biodiversity management requires an integrated and multidisciplinary approach, combining studies on pest and pathogen resistance, plant adaptation, natural selection, ecological genomics, stress physiology and plant development.

The joint expertise within SILS and IBED in combination with external partners (VU, plant breeding industry) forms an ideal cluster to tackle these issues.

Three key questions for exploring the boundaries that constrain or enable plants to tune their response in an adaptive way are addressed.

• How do plants and pests and pathogens perceive, integrate and process stress signals?
• How do physiological and genetic alterations translate into changes of the interaction between these organisms in green ecosystems?
• How do plant and pest and pathogens genomes (co-)evolve as a result of environmental changes?

Research in this field relies heavily on modern technologies such as whole genome sequencing and high throughput analysis of gene expression, protein and metabolite profiling and other means of phenotyping, to investigate the evolutionary diversity existing in plant species and their enemies.

The UvA cluster has unique expertise on the role of large-scale chromosomal changes and patterns of gene retention/loss leading to diversification of both plants and pest/pathogens. This genome-wide knowledge will be used to identify the variation in genes and signal molecules that allow individual plants to cope with stress and to counteract pests and pathogens. In addition, the study of the co-evolutionary arms races between the primary producers and their enemies facilitates the discovery of key-molecules and genes, to be used in applied projects in crop improvement.

Researchers of SILS and IBED join forces in the Green Life Sciences research priority.

Scientific case

Genome-wide knowledge will be used to identify the variation in genes and signal molecules that allow individual plants to cope with stress and to counteract pests and pathogens.

The integrated approach of the research priority programme is bound to result in breakthroughs in this area. Breakthroughs are expected in the fields of pathogenomics, phospholipid signalling, genome evolution, plant stress physiology and pest control. The research is embedded in a technological environment providing cutting edge technology in the fields of microscopy, mass spectrometry, DNA sequencing and e-science.

The scientific potential of this research cluster will be further boosted by the acknowledgement of the integrated approach as a research priority, also supporting the education of a next generation of scientists capable of studying life from molecules to communities using the most modern technologies available.

An ongoing VICI and three ongoing VIDI projects as well as four recently completed VENI projects bear witness to the scientific excellence of Green Life Sciences.

Eight publications with large impact since 2008 are mentioned below.