Your Best Face Forward - how cereals regulate their epidermal surfaces.

Plants living on land face brutal conditions with threats from pests, dehydration and temperature extremes. To survive and thrive on land, plants evolved a specialised surface, sealed by a waxy 'cuticle' and distinctive epidermal cells such as gas pores and defensive barbs. Further improvements to these surface innovations underlie cereal performance on arid grasslands and play important roles in climate resiliency. However, we understand little about how plants, including cereals, coordinate cuticle and epidermal cell specialisations into a coherent surface.

Excitingly, we recently discovered a core patterning pathway that may control conserved and cereal-specific epidermal development, and influence crop survival. In this project, you will advance these findings using state of the art biochemical and molecular approaches to find out how the pathway components interact and respond to environmental change. In particular, you will use CRISPR-Cas based gene editing to identify key components of the pathway, explore the role of post-translational modifications in key components and test whether variation in the pathway improves cereal performance in dry and hot environments. This project will appeal to students keen to explore plant science from molecule to field, and to contribute to crop improvement and food security.