RIBES research theme II: Physical Conditions: understanding responses and adaptation mechanism to stressors

Crops and climate changes

In the next years, we will focus on improving crop stress tolerance to extreme climate events by exploiting systems biology with the aim of pushing our understanding of plant cell physiology to the systems level. Such an understanding has the potential to yield completely new insights on the adaptation of plants to extreme climate events. A complementary array of state-of-the-art live- cell imaging and single-cell analysis techniques will be employed to develop innovative single-cell experimental systems and analytical methods. Furthermore, the latest biotechnology techniques, including CRISPR/Cas9, will be employed to construct appropriate geno- and phenotypes that are more tolerant to various types of stress. The combined expertise at RIBES enables translational research that will bring new developmental insights to the crop level. This aligns with the recent agreement between Radboud University and University Maastricht to collaborate more intensively in the area of (plant) biotechnology on the Venlo campus. The institute’s fully licensed GMO greenhouse facilities are indispensable for realizing these goals through state-of- the-art experiments.

Aquatic life

A second line in Theme II is the stress response in aquatic animals. Aquatic ecosystems provide important services, including clean water and food. Changes in climatological conditions (higher temperatures, altered precipitation patterns) and human pollution (eutrophication) are reducing water quality, leading to stress, reduced fitness, and declining populations of aquatic animals. As more than 99% of all animals are ectotherms, understanding the mechanisms underpinning thermal responses is paramount. Thus, in the next 5 years we want to expand our joint research efforts in this area by investigating the thermal responses of selected aquatic animals. We recently developed a new model system of triploid zebrafish that allows constraints on oxygen demand supply to be elucidated at the level of individual cells. Experimental work on selected organisms using RIBES' state-of-the-art fish facilities will be combined with large-scale analyses of field data and data compiled from the literature to investigate general patterns in thermal responses across a large diversity of species.