Bilateral NSF/BIO-BBSRC - Linking Cell Growth with Proliferation in the Plant Root Meristem

这个由田纳西大学和伦敦大学的研究人员参与的美英合作项目的目标是更好地了解植物在生长过程中如何协调蛋白质的生物合成（生产）和细胞分裂。这一点很重要，因为植物在决定是否将有限的资源投入到生长和不可逆转的新细胞生产中之前，必须仔细整合有关可用营养物质及其能量供应的信息。这项工作将有助于深入了解支撑作物农业生产力的生理和分子过程，并将有助于通过遗传改良优化植物功能和作物生产力。该项目将通过培训博士后科学家、博士生以及附属的初级研究人员，培养他们在实验和计算系统生物学方面具有先进的多学科技能，这些技能在生命科学的学术和工业部门都是高度可移植的。此外，展览还将与一位以植物生命为主题的艺术家合作，向公众推广。蛋白质合成（翻译）是碳和氮化合物的主要汇，一旦通过光合作用同化，就会驱动细胞生长和增殖。该项目旨在破译蛋白质合成驱动的细胞生长如何与分生植物细胞中的细胞增殖相关联，使用植物参考物种拟南芥的根尖作为实验系统。需要验证的一个基本假设是，生长调节信号通路在响应生长刺激信号时协调细胞周期和蛋白质合成。为此，细胞增殖的细胞生物学标志物将随着时间的推移在关键信号通路中携带遗传病变的菌株中成像。翻译效率的数据将使用全基因组技术收集，以确定活跃生长组织中翻译调节的目标。翻译数据将被拟合到一个新兴的mRNA翻译计算模型中，以获得翻译的生化参数，如起始速率。最后，一个网络模型将整合新的和已发表的数据来预测细胞周期转变，以响应驱动细胞增殖和翻译的信号。该项目是两个实验实验室之间的合作，他们在支持细胞分裂和蛋白质翻译的调节过程方面具有互补的专业知识。这两个团队由两位计算研究者组成，他们同样在机器学习、统计建模、模式识别和使用确定性和概率算法的动态建模方面贡献了互补的专业知识。这个英美合作项目由美国国家科学基金会和英国生物技术和生物科学研究委员会支持。

The goal of this collaborative US/UK project that engages researchers at the University of Tennessee and the University of London is to better understand how plants coordinate the biosynthesis (production) of proteins with cell division as they grow. This is important because plants must carefully integrate information about available nutrients and their energy supply before deciding whether or not to invest limited resources into growth and the irreversible production of new cells. The work will lead to insights into the physiological and molecular processes that underpin the agricultural productivity of crop plants and will help to optimize plant function and crop productivity by genetic improvement. The project will develop the scientific workforce by training postdoctoral scientists, PhD students, as well as affiliated junior investigators with advanced multi-disciplinary skills at the interface of experimental and computational systems biology, skills that are highly portable in the academic and industrial sectors of the life sciences. Outreach to the general public will also be performed, in collaboration with an artist that uses plant life-related themes in her installations.Protein synthesis (translation) is a major sink for the carbon and nitrogen compounds that, once assimilated through photosynthesis, drive cell growth and proliferation. The project seeks to decipher how protein synthesis-driven cell growth is connected to cell proliferation in meristematic plant cells, using the root tip of the plant reference species Arabidopsis as an experimental system. An underlying hypothesis that shall be tested is that growth regulatory signaling pathways coordinate both the cell cycle and protein synthesis in response to growth stimulating signals. To this end, cell biological markers of cell proliferation will be imaged over time in strains harboring genetic lesions in key signaling pathways. Data on translational efficiency will be collected using genome-wide techniques in order to identify the targets of translational regulation in actively growing tissues. Translation data will be fitted to an emergent computational model of mRNA translation in order to derive biochemical parameters of translation such as the initiation rate. Finally, a network model will integrate new and published data to predict cell cycle transitions in response to the signals that drive cell proliferation and translation. The project is a collaboration between two experimental labs, who have complementary expertise in the regulatory processes that underpin cell division and protein translation. The two teams are joined by two computational investigators, who likewise contribute complementary expertise in machine learning, statistical modeling, pattern recognition and dynamic modeling using deterministic and probabilistic algorithms. This collaborative US/UK project is supported by the US National Science Foundation and the UK Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council.