Plants are vital to human life and health and are essential to mitigate the effects of climate change. Due to their sessile lifestyle, plants have developed the ability to rapidly adapt their genome expression in response to environmental challenges. Multiple lines of evidence indicate that spatial (3D) organization of nuclear DNA is critical in this adaptation process and the Impact of Nuclear Domains On Gene Expression and Plant Traits (INDEPTH) network will decipher how nuclear architecture, chromatin organization and gene expression are connected and modified in response to internal and external cues. To address this challenge, the INDEPTH Action gathers a pan-European network addressing this by bringing state-of-the-art technologies and fostering multidisciplinary approaches at research, training, education and industrial levels in high- and super-resolution microscopy, 3D image analysis and software development, chromatin domain mapping, genomics, bioinformatics and plant phenotyping. Standard protocols and procedures will be defined in these fields of competence and relevant -omics and 3D images datasets will be deposited in a public repository for inter-laboratory benchmarking and teaching. INDEPTH will promote early career investigators and foster exchange of skills, techniques and know-how between partners through Short Term Scientific Missions and Training Schools. Industrial partners developing software for microscopic devices, new expression technologies or plant varieties with enhanced yield adapted to climate change will integrate INDEPTH outputs for commercial developments. INDEPTH will ultimately lead to a better understanding of agriculturally relevant challenges such as complex plant traits and their interactions with the environment in the context of climate change.
Chromatin domains and epigenetics - Regulation of transcription - 3D-imaging - Functional genomics - knowledge transfer between model and cultivated species
