Magnus Nordborg, Senior Group Leader and Scientific Director at the Gregor Mendel Institute (GMI) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW), has been awarded a Principal Investigator International Projects Grant from the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) in collaboration with Leandro Quadrana and Pierre Baduel. This highly competitive grant supports innovative basic research by providing resources for investigators at Austrian research institutions to work together with international project partners.  

In this newly funded project, the Austrian-French team will investigate the genetic and epigenetic regulators of active transposons – segments of DNA that can move within the genome – in the model plant species Arabidopsis thaliana. Despite being relatively numerous, most transposons (transposable elements (TE)) are ancient and inactive “fossils” in the eukaryotic genome. Only a small subset of transposons, collectively known as the “mobilome”, remain capable of moving around the genome. These active elements can alter genome structure, disrupt or modify gene expression, and even create new genetic variation that may influence evolutionary adaptation. The factors controlling how these mobile TEs move, multiply, and influence genome evolution are still not well understood. 

Combining expertise in population genetics, transposon biology, and epigenetics, Magnus Nordborg and his colleagues aim to identify the factors involved in natural variation of TE silencing and transposition using genome-wide association studies (GWAS) in Arabidopsis populations. Once identified, the team will test these factors and examine how TE insertions affect gene expression, genome stability, and broader patterns of variation. Their findings will be integrated into a broader model of how mobile TEs shape plant genome evolution and adaptation to environmental change.    

About the Austrian Science Fund:  

The Austrian Science Fund (FWF) is Austria’s central funding agency for basic research. The FWF Principal Investigator Projects International program supports collaborative projects for researchers in selected partner countries. This funding scheme promotes combined expertise to address thematically defined research projects while providing researchers with flexibility and intellectual freedom to address individual research questions.