Strawberries hold the key to understanding biodiversity

With the goal of achieving a better understanding of biodiversity within ecosystems through the…

Tia-Lynn Ashman smiles outside of her lab.

Courtesy of the University of Pittsburgh

With the goal of achieving a better understanding of biodiversity within ecosystems through the study of wild strawberries, a team of Pitt researchers received a $2 million grant from the Natural Science Foundation last week.

Unlike human beings who have only two sets of chromosomes, some plants have multiple copies of their genetic sequence and are known as polyploids. Although these plants are common, little is known about them or what they contribute to their ecosystems.

But researchers from Pitt and Oregon State University hope to gain a greater understanding of these plants in the near future through a series of wild strawberry studies.

Professor Tia-Lynn Ashman, the principle researcher of the team from Pitt and associate chairwoman of Pitt’s biology department, said the wild strawberry, or Genus Fragaria, is the optimal subject for her study because many of its 20 species have different numbers of chromosomes.

Because of the relatively small amount of research performed on polyploids, Ashman said it’s unknown whether the plants are more successful in varied environments or whether this success is a result of their genetic diversity.

Ashman said the team will grow the plants in different climatic environments to determine if chromosomal complexity gives plants a greater chance of surviving in multiple ecosystems.

“The objective of the [NSF] grant is to understand how multiple copies of the genome allow a plant to thrive in a variety of environments,” Ashman said.

She said the group hopes to use this research to gain a better understanding of the distribution of plants worldwide, while also determining the impact of a species’ extinction within its ecosystem.

“We hope to gain a better scientific understanding of how biodiversity is distributed geographically and evolutionarily,” Ashman said.

In addition, she said the study will give the researchers a greater understanding of how genomic mechanisms lead to gene expression. But more importantly, Ashman said, the research will provide a greater knowledge of how ecosystems function in general.

“We’re working with the relatives of the strawberry, which is a very important crop that’s related to many other fruits we love like peaches, plums and cherries,” Ashman said.

The grant received by the Pitt and Oregon State researchers is a product of NSF’s Dimensions of Biodiversity program. According to its website, the program “seeks to characterize biodiversity on Earth by using integrative, innovative approaches to fill the most substantial gaps in our understanding of the diversity of life on Earth.”

Ashman said the Dimensions of Biodiversity program has existed for two years and will operate through 2020 with the mission of attaining an “integrative understanding of biodiversity.”