MSc by Research in Biology - Editing Seasonal Time: CRISPR Analysis of Flowering-Time Regulators (Plant Chronobiology Hub)

About the Project

Primary Supervisor: Prof Seth Davis

Co-supervisors: Dr Daphne Ezer and Dr James Ronald

Plants flower at the right time of year by using the circadian clock to measure day length and convert seasonal cues into development. This timing system is central to plant adaptation and is highly relevant to growth, flowering and crop resilience.

This project will use CRISPR genome editing to generate and identify new alleles in genes involved in flowering-time regulation, with a particular focus on links between photoperiod sensing and the circadian clock. The main aim will be to recover informative edited alleles in selected regulators and determine how these changes may affect the seasonal timing pathway.

This MRes project will focus especially on allele discovery: designing CRISPR targets, identifying the edits recovered and interpreting how different mutations may alter gene function. Towards the end of the project, the most informative lines will undergo an initial phenotypic assessment under defined light conditions to ask whether flowering behaviour has begun to shift.

You will

• learn how flowering time is controlled by photoperiod and the circadian clock
• help design CRISPR strategies for selected flowering-time regulators
• assist with the recovery and genotyping of edited lines
• identify and classify new alleles generated by CRISPR
• interpret how different edits are likely to affect gene function
• carry out an initial phenotypic comparison of selected lines under controlled day-length conditions
• present your results in figures, short reports and a dissertation