Biology subjects

Quartuccia, G. I.

Publications and source records attributed to Quartuccia, G. I..

2 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2026

Drought Response and Recovery in Wild, Feral, and Domesticated Brassica rapa: Implications for Crop Climate Resilience

Drought poses a serious threat to agricultural production and food security. Wild relatives of crops, including pre-domesticated and feral varieties, contain genetic diversity that can serve as a breeding resource for increasing desirable crop traits such as drought resilience, but little is known about the relative ability of wild varieties to cope with climate change in most species. In this study, we investigated the drought response of wild, feral, and domesticated varieties of Brassica rapa, an important crop and model species. Twenty-five accessions were subjected to experimental drought and recovery, and variation in traits such as biomass retention, photosynthetic rate, and water use efficiency were quantified. We found several wild accessions of B. rapa had high biomass retention under drought and full recovery of maximum assimilation rate after rewatering, challenging the assumption that feralization produces stress-resilient phenotypes and suggesting that populations of wild crop progenitors are especially promising reservoirs of drought-response diversity. Our results also showed taproot biomass was positively associated with water use efficiency. Our findings provide candidate traits and genotypes for agricultural breeding aimed at increasing drought resilience in domesticated B. rapa cultivars and give insights into evolution under domestication and feralization in the context of climate change.

plant biology↗

bioRxiv2021

Adipocyte Tribbles1 Regulates Plasma Adiponectin and Plasma Lipids in Mice

Multiple GWAS have identified SNPs in the 8q24 locus near the TRIB1 gene that significantly associate with plasma lipids and coronary artery disease. While subsequent studies have uncovered roles for hepatic and myeloid Trib1 in contributing to either plasma lipids or atherosclerosis, the causal tissue for these GWAS associations remains unclear. The same 8q24 SNPs significantly associate with plasma adiponectin levels in humans as well, suggesting a role for TRIB1 in adipose tissue. Here, we report that adipocyte-specific Trib1 knockout mice (Trib1_ASKO) have increased plasma adiponectin levels and decreased plasma cholesterol and triglycerides. We demonstrate that loss of Trib1 increases adipocyte production and secretion of adiponectin independent of the known TRIB1 function of regulating proteasomal degradation. RNA-seq analysis of adipocytes and livers from Trib1_ASKO mice suggests that alterations in adipocyte function underlie the plasma lipid changes observed in these mice. Secretomics and RNA-seq analysis revealed that Trib1_ASKO mice have increased production of Lpl and decreased production of Angptl4 in adipose tissue, and fluorescent substrate assays confirm an increase in adipose tissue Lpl activity, which likely underlies the observed triglyceride phenotype. In summary, we demonstrate here a novel role for adipocyte Trib1 in regulating plasma adiponectin, total cholesterol, and triglycerides in mice, confirming previous genetic associations observed in humans and providing a novel avenue through which Trib1 regulates plasma lipids and coronary artery disease.

physiology↗