1/ Uncovering the role of a conserved ncRNA family in fertilization of Angiosperms (NKFI grant)
Angiosperms are the world's dominant plants; they occupy almost every habitat on Earth. The major characteristics of angiosperms are the specifically organized flower organ and the double fertilization process. The plant seeds and fruits that originate from the sexual reproduction of angiosperms constitute a substantial part of the human diet.
Temperature is one of the major abiotic factors affecting the distribution and productivity of plants worldwide. Flower development and fertilization are amongst the most temperature-sensitive events in plants’ life.
Long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) were shown to be key players involved in different aspects of development. Despite many lncRNAs being identified in plants, the potential roles for only a few lncRNAs have been brought to light. 
In the present programme we aim to understand the roles of an lncRNA family. Preliminary results show that the lncRNA family is conserved in angiosperms, is expresed primarily in flower organs, is temperature regulated and the lncRNA mutants are male sterile. These suggest that these lncRNAs are involved in flower development, fertilization and temperature response during reproductive phase. The project will aim to in-depth charaterize the lncRNA transcription, decay, localization, cofactors and downstream actions. The work will be conducted on Arabidopsis thaliana, its close relative Brassica napus dicot crop. We hope that our findings will contribute to the understanding of the flower development and fertilization process. In the long term, we hope to enable creation of hybrid donor lines and help boosting the fertilization efficiency under diverse temperature conditions.

2/ Mechanistic understanding of transcriptional regulation of heat stress response in Brassicaceae (NKFI grant)
Climate change negatively affects the yield of crops worldwide. Rapeseed (Brassica napus) is an important agricultural crop. The valuable product of B. napus is the rapeseed oil, an important source of edible oil. Rapeseed is sensitive to heat in all stages of development. As research on crops is very laborious, the knowledge on basic cellular pathways like transcription and heat stress response is limited.
Transcriptional regulation is a central molecular pathway that coordinates developmental changes and adaptation to environmental stresses at cellular level. Although heat stress transcriptomes were extensively studied, how the players of transcriptional machinery themselves are regulated is largely unknown. 
In the present programme we propose to uncover the mechanisms coordinating the transcriptional process under ambient and heat stress conditions in the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana and its relative crop plant Brassica napus. Specific aims of our project are to (i) study the requirement of the RNA polymerase subunit 9 (RPB9) during heat stress adaptation, (ii) understand the mechanism of polymerase II elongation factor TFIIS’s and RPB9’s action in regulation of transcriptional fidelity, and (iii) uncover the genetic and molecular interaction between nuclear and cytoplasmic transcriptional- and protein-quality control pathways. We hope that our findings will significantly contribute to basic understanding of transcriptional regulation and will accelerate the development of heat-tolerant plants that may have a huge importance in the light of climate change.