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.

该奖项的全部或部分资金根据《2021 年美国救援计划法案》（公法 117-2）提供。在作物物种中，植物的结构是产量的主要决定因素，可以定义其作为可再生生物材料的价值。细胞是建筑特征的组成部分，它们的生长是由巨大的内部压力驱动的，这种内部压力使细胞变得肿胀，并使坚韧的外部细胞承受非常高的拉力。细胞壁的材料特性决定了在广泛的空间尺度上的生长模式。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来决定生长模式。细胞内的蛋白质机器需要解释来自细胞壁的信息，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基因编码的生物力学机器，以可预测的方式自组装。由于缺乏将物理学和材料科学的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，阐明潜在控制机制的进展受到阻碍。生物学家强烈需要能够开发并充分表征植物发育的机械模型，为理解植物形态发生的细胞机制以及这些知识在农业中的下游应用提供知识基础。该项目中的研究和学习活动将催生分析和操纵增长模式的新方法。工程和生物学领域的知名专家和初级科学家将广泛地将机械建模和微机械分析与植物细胞生物学结合起来。研究团队将创建学习计划，使这种交叉培训具有普遍性，并制作出更多用户友好的模型，供研究和教育界广泛采用。美国救援计划的资金为这位处于职业生涯关键阶段的研究者提供了支持。植物形态控制是一个多尺度的综合过程，其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。然而，我们对亚细胞生长模式如何确定以及它们如何扩展以影响细胞、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是不正确的，因为大多数细胞类型具有异质生长模式。此外，定量预测壁中的拉力模式很困难，因为它们取决于膨胀压力、多种类型的几何特征以及壁的材料特性。有限元建模提供了一条有效的前进道路，因为它将细胞模拟为薄壁加压壳，并且可用于定量模拟具有真实细胞和组织几何形状的拉力和生长模式。该模型还对驱动植物细胞生长的细胞壁异质性的位置和类型以及细胞骨架如何感知细胞壁力进行了具体预测。这个“过渡到卓越”项目将开发一个新颖的学习和研究计划，广泛地使生物学家和工程师能够严格整合有限元建模、实验验证和模型细化。这种方法以及将被分析的单细胞和器官系统有可能定义可推广的形态发生“规则”，这些规则从纳米到厘米尺度运作以编程功能特征。这项研究将作为一个框架，创建更复杂的模型，并提供足够的细节，为植物表型基因工程策略提供信息。该奖项反映了 NSF 的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。