Root SAT-NAV: uncovering the molecular mechanisms guiding root angle in soil

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Food security represents a major global issue. Crop production has to double by 2050 to keep pace with global population increasing to 9 billion. This target is even more challenging given the impact of climate change on water availability and the aim to reduce fertilizer inputs to make agriculture become more environmentally sustainable. In both cases, developing crops with improved water and nutrient uptake efficiency would contribute significantly to the solution. Root architecture critically influences nutrient and water uptake efficiency. For example, phosphate uptake efficiency could be significantly improved by manipulating root growth angle to better explore the topsoil where it accumulates. Despite this knowledge, the genes that regulate root angle in crops remain to be identified. Root angle is primarily regulated by the gravitropic response. However, other directional signals like water gradients induce roots' stress-activated-tropisms navigation (SAT-NAV) system when encountering drying soil. Despite their obvious importance, it is currently unclear how hydrotropism interacts with gravitropism to enable roots to forage for water. Understanding the genetic and environmental regulation of root angle is therefore of vital importance to crop improvement.Together with our collaborators, we have recently shown that root tips respond to changes in gravity or moisture by forming gradients of the plant hormones, auxin and ABA, respectively. After a gravity stimulus, auxin accumulates on the lower side of roots, inhibiting cell growth and causing roots to bend in the direction of gravity. We suspect that ABA functions in a similar way to direct root growth towards water. How do these hormones cause these changes? We have identified ~570 genes that auxin regulates to cause root bending. The effect of auxin on root bending is therefore very complicated. To help us deal with this complexity, we will employ a new approach termed Systems Biology that brings together the best of Biology and Maths. This involves generating a large body of experimental information about these different genes and the processes they control that is then integrated into mathematical models. Auxin regulates root bending by inducing responses in many different cells and tissues. Our model therefore has to include information not just about a list of genes but also consider their behaviour in many different root cells and tissues. We then need to determine how realistic our root model is, by designing experiments to test its ability to accurately predict real results. The model can then be used to test ideas and provide new insight about how auxin (or ABA) controls root bending at the gene, cell and tissue level. It will be very important to test whether our findings in the lab are relevant to soil. We will address this important question by exploiting new advances in non-invasive imaging to monitor root growth in soils using X-ray micro Computed Tomography (CT). Using this new imaging capability we will test the impact of altering root gravitropism and hydrotropism on root water and nutrient uptake efficiency in rice. The knowledge gained from this study will help scientists understand how best to manipulate root angle and enhance crop yield.