RoL: FELS: EAGER: Connecting RNA Molecular Kinetics to Developmental Regulation

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Understanding how cells perceive and respond to developmental signals is critical to understanding how an organism develops its overall shape and structure. One important way that cells respond is through changes in gene expression, which is typically monitored by measuring mRNA abundance. However, changes in mRNA abundance have not been a highly predictive tool for understanding growth and development. This project will address whether specific mRNA decay characteristics improve predictive power by investigating RNA decay rates in the plant Arabidopsis thaliana in response to signals that drive development. Information learned through this study will provide deeper understanding of developmental signals and their cellular responses, which will yield better predictions of how targeted genetic changes might lead to desired traits in agriculture and medicine. Project participants will be involved in local K-12 science education. Undergraduate scientists, including those from under-represented groups, will be trained in modern molecular and cell biology techniques. This project will investigate a rule of life that high rates of RNA flux, or fast RNA turnover, provide predictive power when analyzing transcriptome data because high-flux RNAs are expected to have the fastest abundance-level response to an inductive signal. The project will follow mRNA decay rate responses to inductive signals with a focus on vascular development, an important emergent property of plants. mRNA decay rates will be analyzed genome-wide using mathematical modeling approaches to identify two mRNA decay rate parameters, flux and the beta parameter, and mRNAs whose decay rates change over the time course of vascular development. The project will test whether changes in mRNA decay rates are necessary by imposing constitutive fast or slow decay, while controlling for protein abundance, and comparing induced vascular development responses of wild type and decay-rate-modified tissues. The new experimental tool for engineering stability (or instability) into RNAs has the potential to also impact synthetic biology approaches. Elucidation of the role of RNA flux in fine control of gene expression as a rule of life might lead to better forecasting of the post-transcriptional regulatory potential of genes responsible for controlling emergent properties such as development of leaf vascular patterning.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.