Understanding the regulation and function of key transcription factors in the anther tapetum.

Successful flower development and pollination is critical for yield of most crops and thus food production. However, this process is particularly vulnerable to abiotic stress, particularly high temperature, frequently resulting in reduced fertility. Producing plants capable of tolerating environmental stress, especially during pollen development is crucial to sustaining future global crop yields. The tapetum is a cell layer in the anther that is essential for viable pollen development and thus fertility. It is a metabolically highly active cell layer, that is the major source of pollen cell wall materials during pollen development and then goes through Programmed Cell Death to release wall materials onto the immature pollen grains. Significant work has occurred using the Arabidopsis model to understand gene regulation in the tapetum and shown it to be a dynamic, but highly regulated network of feed-forward and feed-backward regulatory pathways. This research is aimed at understanding the molecular pathways of tapetum gene expression that impact on pollen formation. Particular emphasis will be towards chromatin modification during pollen development, since this has been implicated as key in adaptive memory of sub lethal heat stress leading to plant tolerance of stress.