EAGER: Emergent properties governing robustness in regulatory networks important for cell, tissue, and organ function

植物作为食物、纤维、住所和燃料的主要来源，对人类生活的各个方面都至关重要。植物工程需要改变游戏规则的进步，以有效和可持续地增加作物产量，满足不断增长的人口的需求。植物生长和生物量的调节依赖于干细胞的持续生成，干细胞分化形成植物的所有细胞、组织和器官。了解干细胞自我更新及其分化的空间和时间控制对于产生可预测的结果和重新设计植物以满足我们未来的需求至关重要。目前，已知细胞群根据位置信息分化并显示功能，并且这些局部细胞与细胞的相互作用驱动细胞特异性基因表达模式。然而，迄今为止，询问细胞重编程受到操纵单个细胞的挑战的限制。EAGER奖将促进新技术的发展，从而能够直接研究器官形成过程中的植物细胞特征。 该项目将为博士后、研究生和本科生提供联合收割机跨学科和融合的研究培训。将通过既定和持续的外联活动（即，包括为代表性不足的少数民族大学生提供暑期实习机会），以培养未来劳动力所需的技能。这项研究利用3D生物打印，定量图像分析和单细胞转录组学，将解决以下问题：在细胞与细胞之间的交流、模式的形成、和鲁棒性，指导植物器官形成过程中的细胞身份和分化？因此，通过将3D生物打印与单细胞转录组学相结合，该提案将提供一种创新的方法来研究植物发育过程的最小线索，位置效应和信号传导途径，如单细胞中的细胞身份或分化。这项研究将拓宽对各种信号如何与强大的发展计划相结合的理解，并获得可能导致发现新模式和形式的知识。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为值得通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估来支持。

Plants are critical for all aspects of human life as the primary source of food, fiber, shelter, and fuel. Game-changing advances are needed for plant engineering to effectively and sustainably increase crop production and meet the demands of a growing population. Regulation of plant growth and biomass is dependent on the continuous generation of stem cells that differentiate to form all the cells, tissues, and organs of the plant. Understanding the spatial and temporal control of stem cell self-renewal and their differentiation is critical for generating predictable outcomes and redesigning plants for our future needs. At present, it is known that groups of cells differentiate and display functions in response to positional information, and those local cell-to-cell interactions drive cell-specific gene expression patterns. However, interrogating cellular reprogramming has thus far been limited by the challenge of manipulating individual cells. This EAGER award will lead to the development of novel technological advances that will enable the direct study of plant cell characteristics during organ formation. This project will combine interdisciplinary and convergent research training for postdocs, graduate, and undergraduate students. It will be coupled with professional development by means of established and ongoing outreach activities (i.e., including a summer internship for underrepresented minority undergraduates) to build the skill sets needed for tomorrow’s workforce.This research, exploiting 3D bioprinting, quantitative image analysis, and single-cell transcriptomics, will address the following question: What are the emergent system-level characteristics involved in cell-to-cell communication, patterning formation, and robustness that instruct cell identity and differentiation during plant organ formation? Accordingly, by combining 3D bioprinting with single-cell transcriptomics, this proposal will offer an innovative approach to study the minimal cues, positional effects, and signaling pathways key for plant developmental processes such as cell identity or differentiation in single cells. This research will broaden the understanding of how various signals are integrated with robust developmental programs, and this gained knowledge that could lead to the discovery of new patterns and forms.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.