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Plant metabolism serves as the primary mechanism for converting assimilated carbon into essential compounds crucial for plant growth and ultimately, crop yield. This renders it a focal point of research with significant implications. Despite notable strides in comprehending the genetic principles underpinning metabolism and yield, there remains a dearth of knowledge regarding the genetic factors responsible for trait variation under varying environmental conditions. Given the burgeoning global population and the advancing challenges posed by climate change, unraveling the intricacies of metabolic and yield responses to water scarcity became increasingly important in safeguarding food security.
Our research group has recently started to work on the genetic resources of legume species. To this end, the study presented here investigates the metabolic diversity across five different legume species at a tissue level, identifying species-specific biosynthesis of alkaloids as well as iso-/flavonoids with diverse functional groups, namely prenylation, phenylacylation as well as methoxylation, to create a resource for follow up studies investigation the metabolic diversity in natural diverse populations of legume species.
Following this, the second study investigates the genetic architecture of drought-induced changes in a global common bean population. Here, a plethora of quantitative trait loci (QTL) associated with various traits are identified by performing genome-wide association studies (GWAS), including for lipid signaling. On this site, overexpression of candidates highlighted the induction of several oxylipins reported to be pivotal in coping with harsh environmental conditions such as water scarcity.
Diverging from the common bean and GWAS, the following study focuses on identifying drought-related QTL in tomato using a bi-parental breeding population. This descriptive study highlights novel multi-omic QTL, including metabolism, photosynthesis as well as fruit setting, some of which are uniquely assigned under drought. Compared to conventional approaches using the bi-parental IL population, the study presented improves the resolution by assessing further backcrossed ILs, named sub-ILs.
In the final study, a photosynthetic gene, namely a PetM subunit of the cytochrome b6f complex encoding gene, involved in electron flow is characterized in an horticultural important crop. While several advances have been made in model organisms, this study highlights the transition of this fundamental knowledge to horticultural important crops, such as tomato, and investigates its function under differing light conditions. Overall, the presented thesis combines different strategies in unveiling the genetic components in multi-omic traits under drought using conventional breeding populations as well as a diverse global population. To this end, it allows a comparison of either approach and highlights their strengths and weaknesses.
Due to continuously intensifying human usage of the marine environment worldwide ranging cetaceans face an increasing number of threats. Besides whaling, overfishing and by-catch, new technical developments increase the water and noise pollution, which can negatively affect marine species. Cetaceans are especially prone to these influences, being at the top of the food chain and therefore accumulating toxins and contaminants. Furthermore, they are extremely noise sensitive due to their highly developed hearing sense and echolocation ability. As a result, several cetacean species were brought to extinction during the last century or are now classified as critically endangered. This work focuses on two odontocetes. It applies and compares different molecular methods for inference of population status and adaptation, with implications for conservation. The worldwide distributed sperm whale (Physeter macrocephalus) shows a matrilineal population structure with predominant male dispersal. A recently stranded group of male sperm whales provided a unique opportunity to investigate male grouping for the first time. Based on the mitochondrial control region, I was able to infer that male bachelor groups comprise multiple matrilines, hence derive from different social groups, and that they represent the genetic variability of the entire North Atlantic. The harbor porpoise (Phocoena phocoena) occurs only in the northern hemisphere. By being small and occurring mostly in coastal habitats it is especially prone to human disturbance. Since some subspecies and subpopulations are critically endangered, it is important to generate and provide genetic markers with high resolution to facilitate population assignment and subsequent protection measurements. Here, I provide the first harbour porpoise whole genome, in high quality and including a draft annotation. Using it for mapping ddRAD seq data, I identify genome wide SNPs and, together with a fragment of the mitochondrial control region, inferred the population structure of its North Atlantic distribution range. The Belt Sea harbors a distinct subpopulation oppose to the North Atlantic, with a transition zone in the Kattegat. Within the North Atlantic I could detect subtle genetic differentiation between western (Canada-Iceland) and eastern (North Sea) regions, with support for a German North Sea breading ground around the Isle of Sylt. Further, I was able to detect six outlier loci which show isolation by distance across the investigated sampling areas. In employing different markers, I could show that single maker systems as well as genome wide data can unravel new information about population affinities of odontocetes. Genome wide data can facilitate investigation of adaptations and evolutionary history of the species and its populations. Moreover, they facilitate population genetic investigations, providing a high resolution, and hence allowing for detection of subtle population structuring especially important for highly mobile cetaceans.