Transitions: Creating a Trans-Disciplinary Approach to Discover Multi-Scale Control Mechanisms of Plant Morphogenesis

转变：创建跨学科方法来发现植物形态发生的多尺度控制机制

• 批准号: 2148122
• 负责人: Daniel Szymanski
• 金额: $ 74.99万
• 依托单位: Purdue University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2022-01-01 至 2024-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2148122&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Transitions; Creating; Trans; Disciplinary; Approach

This award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2).In crop species, the architecture of the plant is a primary determinant of yield and can define its value as a renewable biomaterial. Cells are the building blocks of architectural traits and their growth is driven by a large internal pressure that makes the cells turgid and subjects the tough outer cell to very high tensile forces. The material properties of the cell wall determine the patterns of growth across a wide range of spatial scales. A major challenge in plant biology is to understand how genetic pathways and proteins inside the cell control the extracellular properties of polysaccharides to dictate growth patterns. The protein machineries inside the cell need to interpret information from the cell wall so that changes in cell size and shape can be predictable. Plant growth systems can be thought of as genetically encoded biomechanical machines that self-assemble in predictable ways. Progress in unravelling the underlying control mechanisms has been hindered by the lack of interdisciplinary approaches that combine the concepts of physics and material science with those of plant genetics and cell biology. There is a strong need for biologists to be able to develop and fully characterize mechanical models of plant development that provide the knowledge base for understanding the cellular mechanisms of plant morphogenesis and the downstream application of this knowledge to agriculture. The research and learning activities in this project will seed new approaches to analyze and manipulate growth patterns. Established experts and junior scientists in engineering and biology will broadly integrate mechanical modelling and micromechanical analyses with plant cell biology. The research team will create learning programs to make this cross-training generalizable and to make more user friendly models that can be widely adopted by the research and educational communities. American Rescue Plan funding provides support for this investigator at a critical stage in his career.Plant morphology control is a multi-scale integrated process in which cytoskeletal and cell wall systems interact to generate adaptive growth patterns. However, our understanding of how subcellular growth patterns are determined and how they scale to influence cell-, tissue-, and organ-level phenotypes are not known. Historical assumptions about uniform diffuse growth are likely incorrect as most cell types have heterogeneous growth patterns. In addition, it has been difficult to quantitatively predict tensile force patterns in the wall, because they depend on turgor pressure, multiple types of geometric features, and the material properties of the wall. Finite element modelling provides an efficient path forward because it simulates the cells as a thin-walled pressurized shells and can be used to quantitatively simulate the tensile forces and growth patterns with realistic cell and tissue geometries. The model also makes specific predictions about the location and type of cell wall heterogeneity that drive plant cell growth and how cell wall forces can be sensed by the cytoskeleton. This “Transitions to Excellence” project will develop a novel learning and research program that will broadly enable biologists and engineers to rigorously integrate finite element modelling, experimental validation, and model refinement. This approach and the single cell and organ systems that will be analyzed, have the potential to define generalizable morphogenesis “rules” that operate from the nanometer to centimeter scales to program functional traits. This research will serve as a framework to create more sophisticated models with sufficient detail to inform strategies to genetically engineer plant phenotypes.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.

该奖项是根据2021年《美国救援计划法》（公法117-2）的全部或部分资助的。在农作物物种中，该植物的建筑是产量的主要决定者，可以将其价值定义为可再生生物材料。细胞是建筑特征的组成部分，其生长是由巨大的内部压力驱动的，这会使细胞肿胀，并将坚硬的外细胞受到非常高的拉伸力。细胞壁的材料特性决定了各种空间尺度的生长模式。植物生物学的一个主要挑战是了解细胞内的遗传途径和蛋白质如何控制多糖的细胞外特性以决定生长模式。细胞内部的蛋白质机器需要解释细胞壁的信息，以便可以预测细胞大小和形状的变化。植物生长系统可以被认为是以可预测方式自组装的遗传编码的生物力学机器。缺乏将物理和材料科学概念与植物遗传学和细胞生物学的概念相结合的跨学科方法，从而阻碍了揭开潜在控制机制的进展。生物学家非常需要能够开发和充分表征植物开发的机械模型，该模型为理解植物形态发生的细胞机制以及该知识的下游应用以同意而提供了知识库。该项目中的研究和学习活动将播种新的方法来分析和操纵增长模式。工程和生物学领域成熟的专家和初级科学家将与植物细胞生物学广泛整合机械建模和微机械分析。研究团队将创建学习计划，以使这种交叉训练可以推广，并制造更具用户友好的模型，这些模型可以被研究和教育社区广泛采用。美国救援计划的资金在他的职业生涯的关键阶段为该研究者提供了支持。植物形态控制是一个多规模的综合过程，在该过程中，细胞骨架和细胞壁系统相互作用以产生适应性生长模式。但是，我们对细胞生长模式的确定方式以及它们如何扩展影响细胞，组织和器官水平表型的理解尚不清楚。关于均匀扩散生长的历史假设可能不正确，因为大多数细胞类型具有异质生长模式。此外，很难定量预测墙壁上的拉伸力模式，因为它们取决于turgor压力，多种类型的几何特征和壁的材料特性。有限元建模提供了有效的路径，因为它将细胞模拟为薄壁加压壳，可用于定量模拟具有逼真的细胞和组织几何形状的拉伸力和生长模式。该模型还对细胞壁异质性的位置和类型做出了特定的预测，这些细胞壁异质性驱动植物细胞的生长以及如何通过细胞骨架感测。这个“向卓越的过渡”项目将开发一个新颖的学习和研究计划，该计划将广泛地使生物学家和工程师严格整合有限元建模，实验验证和模型改进。这种方法以及将要分析的单细胞和器官系统，有可能定义从纳米到厘米到厘米尺度到程序功能性状的可推广形态发生的“规则”。这项研究将作为一个框架，以创建具有足够细节的更复杂模型，以告知策略，以一般设计植物表型。该奖项反映了NSF的法定任务，并通过使用基金会的知识分子优点和更广泛的影响审查标准来评估被认为是宝贵的支持。