Integrative Analysis of Plasticity in Cell Fate Determination in Plants

PI: Julia Bailey-Serres（加州大学河滨分校）CoPIs: Siobhan Brady和Neelima Sinha（加州大学戴维斯分校）和Roger Deal（埃默里大学）从种子发芽到导致下一代的受精事件，植物的发育是由遗传决定的过程精心安排的，而环境因素则对这些过程进行了微调。这需要在植物生命周期的过程中对单个细胞中的基因网络进行精确的调节。这个项目将破译植物特定类型细胞内复杂的基因调控。这将通过将该团队在模式植物拟南芥（Arabidopsis thaliana）上开创的方法转移到三种重要作物上来实现：水稻、苜蓿和番茄。这些技术允许从叶子、根或其他器官的目标细胞亚群中分离含有DNA和RNA的细胞核以及将mRNA转化为蛋白质的核糖体，而无需解剖。开发的新遗传资源将用于研究美国农业面临的两大环境威胁：干旱和洪水对发展的影响。其结果将是更好地理解植物发育与环境因素的整合。该项目将产生多重更广泛的影响。使用并行的多层和计算稳健的分析，该项目将解决两个重要的生物学问题：根和芽的干细胞（分生组织）的基因调控在不同物种之间是如何不同的？环境胁迫如何影响根中特化细胞类型的发育？这些发现将为促进下游非生物应激耐受性的改善提供见解。这也将为评价三种重要作物的细胞类型特异性表达提供资源。种子材料和数据集将通过NCBI Short Read Archive （SRA, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sra）和Gramene （http://www.gramene.org/）与植物基因组研究界共享。最后，该项目将邀请博士后研究人员和研究生在生物学和计算科学领域进行高级跨学科培训，他们将从指导本科生的研究经验中受益。最后，该项目将让高中生参与到课堂和实验室中，开发教学工具，并加深对植物研究对人类重要性的理解。

PI: Julia Bailey-Serres (University of California - Riverside)CoPIs: Siobhan Brady and Neelima Sinha (University of California - Davis) and Roger Deal (Emory University) From the germination of a seed to the fertilization events that lead to the next generation, plant development is exquisitely orchestrated by genetically determined processes that are fine-tuned by environmental cues. This entails the precise regulation of networks of genes in individual cells over the course of the plant life cycle. This project will decipher the complex regulation of genes within specific types of cells of the plant. This will be accomplished by transfer of methods pioneered by this team in the model plant species Arabidopsis thaliana to three important crops: rice, alfalfa, and tomato. These technologies allow for the isolation of cell nuclei containing DNA and RNA and the ribosomes that translate mRNA into protein from targeted subpopulations of cells of a leaf, root or other organs, without the need for dissection. The new genetic resources developed will be used to study how development is perturbed by two major environmental threats to US agriculture: drought and flood. The outcome will be a greater understanding of the integration of plant development with environmental cues. The project will have multiple broader impacts. Using parallel multi-tiered and computationally robust analyses, the project will address two important biological questions: How does gene regulation in the stem cells (meristem) of roots and shoots differ across species? How does environmental stress influence the development of specialized cell types in the root? The findings will provide insights that could facilitate downstream improvement of abiotic stress tolerance. It will also generate resources for the evaluation of cell-type specific expression in three important crops. The seed material and data sets will be shared with the plant genome research community through the NCBI Short Read Archive (SRA, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sra) and Gramene (http://www.gramene.org/). Finally, the project will engage postdoctoral researchers and graduate students in advanced interdisciplinary training in biology and computational sciences, who will benefit from the experience of mentoring undergraduate students in research. Finally, the project will engage high school students in the classroom and the laboratory, develop teaching tools, and foster greater understanding of the importance of plant research to humankind.