The future of global food security

Our capacity to solve this global problem, and to tackle future threats, depends on investing in the most promising researchers whose work will advance our understanding and help to protect the future of the planet. In 2017, alumnus Robert Cawthorn (1956)

Dr Natasha Yelina, Cawthorn Trinity Senior Postdoctoral Researcher

Thanks to alumni support, I have established my first research group at the University of Cambridge Crop Science Centre, and I am leading a team of four researchers, pictured, who work on trait reassortment control in legume crops and model plants (a widely studied species of plant chosen for the ease of investigating particular biological phenomena). I am building my research programme with the overarching aim of developing technologies that can speed up conventional crop breeding by overcoming intrinsic limitations of trait reassortment, which is reshuffling of the genetic material of two parents resulting in new combinations in offspring.

I work on meiosis, a specialised cell division that produces gametes, eggs, and sperm. Unlike other cells in the organism, gametes are not genetically identical to parental cells. This is because during meiosis, chromosomes from Mum and Dad physically exchange parts, or recombine. Recombination is essential to ensure that gametes receive the correct DNA content from their parents. It is also important for evolution because parental trait reshuffling, or reassortment, that occurs during meiosis, brings together novel trait combinations, and breaks apart existing ones, driving genetic diversity.

made a gift to support a postdoctoral research post in Crop Sciences, a joint initiative of benefit to both Trinity and the University’s Crop Science Centre. Dr Natasha Yelina was appointed to the post in 2021. Here she presents her research.

Recombination is, therefore, of great importance for crop breeding where development of improved crop varieties relies on selecting novel, agronomically favourable trait combinations.

Despite its importance for crop breeding, trait reassortment is limiting because recombination events are infrequent and uneven. As a result, the current pace of crop breeding is insufficient to meet food security demands of the world’s growing population. A loss of genetic variation during crop domestication has reduced the pool of available agronomically valuable traits. Wild crop relatives, however, have an untapped reservoir of traits providing adaptations to environmental stresses which include extreme temperatures, drought, pests, and pathogens. Due to intrinsic limitations of recombination, the introgression (the transfer of genetic information from one species to another as a result of hybridization and repeated backcrossing) of agronomically valuable traits from wild crop relatives into elite varieties is slow, while a large proportion of traits do not undergo reassortment and remain ‘locked’ for breeding. Therefore, there is a need to overcome the limitations of trait reassortment to expedite the breeding of new improved crop varieties.

Fundamental advances in a model plant Arabidopsis, which is a member of the mustard [Brassicaceae] family, including my own post-doctoral research, have led to our improved understanding of the mechanisms of meiotic trait reassortment control in plants. We now know that chromosome-wide recombination ‘landscapes’ are influenced by a combined action of pro- and anti-recombination proteins (which promote or suppress recombination, respectively) and chromatin (chemical modifications to the chromosomal DNA and its associated proteins, histones). So, our research is already making a valuable contribution to expediting crop breeding programmes. Thanks to the advances in genetics, genomics, and gene editing, we can now enhance trait reassortment by mutating genes encoding anti-crossover factors, upregulating genes encoding pro-crossover factors and altering chromatin.

I am very grateful for the philanthropic support which is funding my Fellowship at the new Cambridge Crop Science Centre, a flagship initiative with a focus on translating fundamental plant molecular biology achievements into solutions for sustainable agriculture. The Fellowship has allowed me to achieve an otherwise very difficult transition from a post-doc to a first independent research position, an essential stepping-stone to a career in academia, and it has provided me with a unique opportunity to be at the centre of both fundamental and translational research (the latter aims to develop basic research findings into practical solutions that directly benefit humankind).

I am now part of a wider and highly intellectually stimulating network of fundamental research excellence in plant science in Cambridge, which includes the Department of Plant Sciences, Cambridge University Botanic Garden, and the Sainsbury Laboratory (SLCU). My translational research interests are strongly supported by the Crop Science Centre and its alliance with the National Institute of Agricultural Botany (NIAB), a world-leading crop research institute who put fundamental science into practice. I hope that my research will also help translate cutting-edge fundamental science into new crop breeding solutions to ensure that we can continue to feed the world, and that we can do so sustainably.

If you want to discover more about supporting Trinity research, please contact the Alumni Relations and Development Office alumni@trin.cam.ac.uk cropsciencecentre.org/staff/natasha-yelina @CropSciCentre