An Integrated Analysis of Root Gravitropism

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Plants prostrated by heavy storms tend to curve back upward, thereby lifting their leaves, flowers and/or seeds up above ground, where they can continue to grow and develop away from the soil moisture and pathogens. Crop plants also display a more-or-less efficient curvature response to prostration, thereby bringing seeds up back into a position that is amenable to mechanical harvesting. This response is possible because all plant organs can sense their orientation relative to gravity and light and direct their growth accordingly. The MPI's laboratory is investigating the molecular mechanisms that enable plant organs to use gravity as a growth guide. With this award, the PI and his co-workers will use state-of-the-art molecular genetic strategies, including next-generation sequencing and high-throughput identification of proteins, to analyze global genome expression responses to gravistimulation in wild type and mutant seedlings, thereby generating a global view of the molecular mechanisms that allow plants to use gravity as a guide for growth. In the long term, results derived from this project should yield information that will inform the design of cultural, engineering and/or plant-breeding strategies aimed at improving crop productivity in marginal lands or under conditions that expose them to heavier winds and storms, a predicted consequence of global climate change. The results will be published in the scientific literature, and the primary data will be made available through public repository web sites such as the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/geo/) repository at the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI). This project will also include an important instructional component. In addition to involving a postdoctoral fellow, graduate and undergraduate students in this research, the PI will recruit high-school teachers and students to develop instructional modules for K-12 education that integrate materials from this research, address specific curricular needs, and are aligned with state and national science standards.