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A Complexity Science Approach to Plant Tissue Regeneration

植物组织再生的复杂科学方法

基本信息

批准号：
BB/M002624/1
负责人：
Giovanni Sena
金额：
$ 43.17万
依托单位：
Imperial College London
依托单位国家：
英国
项目类别：
Research Grant
财政年份：
2015
资助国家：
英国
起止时间：
2015 至无数据
项目状态：
已结题

来源：
https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=BB%2FM002624%2F1
关键词：
Complexity Science Approach Plant Tissue

项目摘要

Tissue regeneration in multi-cellular organisms is a topic of great interest both from a basic scientific point of view and from an applied one. In the attempt to shed new light on the fundamental nature of the mechanisms underlying tissue regeneration, this project intends to test experimentally a quite technical but intriguing hypothesis on the way cellular divisions are organized during regeneration.The experimental case studied is that of a plant's root that completely regenerates its tip when this is excised by mechanical means, and a multi-disciplinary approach combining live imaging and advanced statistical analysis is followed.From the experimental point of view, the main challenge is to develop a type of microscope that allows very frequent observations of the internal organisation of a regenerating root, without of course killing the root. The idea is to be able to collect data about when and where cell divisions occur during the tissue re-growth and reorganization, and this can be achieved through a non-invasive technique that detects fluorescent proteins in the sample. The trick is to genetically engineer a fluorescent protein that is expressed in a cell only at the moment of its division, and this has been done, already.The initial part of this project is dedicated to the optimisation of a microscope - starting from existing prototypes - specifically redesigned to image for many days a regenerating root, quite often and at cellular resolution. Time-lapse sequences will be then systematically collected with this instrument, to capture in great details the regeneration of the root tip.The more advanced part of the project is aimed at the statistical analysis of such data, to test the hypothesis that the dynamics of cellular divisions guiding root regeneration shares common features with a wide class of complex phenomena found in physics and biology, as different from each other as sand piles, earthquakes, flying birds or neural networks. This class is sometimes called Self-Organizing Critical (SOC) systems, and is characterized by the ideas that (i) global patterns emerge simply from interactions among all the system's elements and without the need of a central director (self-organization) and that (ii) the system exhibits a spontaneous convergence towards a special (critical) state. At the critical state the system is said to be scale-free, which means that there is no typical length or duration in the underlying dynamics. Moreover, at the critical state some statistical distributions that describe the system's dynamics take a universal shape (power law distributions). It is a bit technical, but it turns out that these statistical distributions can be measured from the data collected with the microscope used in this project, and therefore it becomes possible to test whether a regenerating root behaves like a SOC system or not. We will then be able to test more in details the causal link between cellular interactions and global tissue behavior by developing a mathematical model designed to give a simplified representation of all the key characteristics of the system. This will be based on previous experience gained by applied mathematicians in the field of complexity science, where SOC and similar phenomena are studied in great details.Finally, it is understood that any major improvement of our understanding on how a root can regenerate its tip after a major injury opens the possibility to enhance growth and resistance of plants of economic interests in harsh conditions. Moreover, any new insight in natural mechanisms leading to tissue repair and regeneration is of major interest for the biomedical and biotech community.

多细胞生物体的组织再生无论从基础科学的观点还是从应用的观点来看都是一个非常有趣的话题。为了揭示组织再生机制的基本性质，本项目打算通过实验验证一个相当技术性但有趣的假设，即细胞分裂在再生过程中的组织方式。研究的实验案例是植物的根，当用机械方法切除时，它的尖端完全再生，从实验的角度来看，主要的挑战是开发一种显微镜，允许非常频繁地观察再生根的内部组织，当然也不会杀死树根。其想法是能够收集关于组织再生长和重组过程中细胞分裂发生的时间和地点的数据，这可以通过检测样品中荧光蛋白的非侵入性技术来实现。这个项目的关键是通过基因工程的方法，使荧光蛋白在细胞分裂的时候才能表达出来。这个项目的第一部分是优化显微镜，从现有的原型开始，经过专门的重新设计，可以对再生的根进行连续多日的成像，并且经常以细胞的分辨率成像。随后，该仪器将系统地收集时间推移序列，以捕捉根尖再生的详细信息。该项目的更高级部分旨在对这些数据进行统计分析，以验证以下假设：引导根再生的细胞分裂动力学与物理学和生物学中发现的广泛的复杂现象具有共同特征，就像沙堆、地震、飞鸟或神经网络一样互不相同。这类系统有时被称为自组织临界系统（SOC），其特征在于以下思想：（i）全局模式简单地从系统所有元素之间的相互作用中出现，而不需要一个中央控制器（自组织）;（ii）系统表现出向一个特殊（临界）状态的自发收敛。在临界状态下，系统被称为无标度的，这意味着在潜在的动力学中没有典型的长度或持续时间。此外，在临界状态下，描述系统动态的一些统计分布具有普遍的形状（幂律分布）。这有点技术性，但事实证明，这些统计分布可以从本项目中使用的显微镜收集的数据中测量，因此可以测试再生根是否表现得像SOC系统。然后，我们将能够通过开发一个数学模型来更详细地测试细胞相互作用和全球组织行为之间的因果关系，该模型旨在给出系统所有关键特征的简化表示。这将基于应用数学家在复杂性科学领域获得的经验，在复杂性科学领域，SOC和类似的现象得到了非常详细的研究。最后，可以理解的是，我们对根在严重受伤后如何再生其尖端的理解的任何重大改进都有可能提高经济利益植物在恶劣条件下的生长和抵抗力。此外，任何导致组织修复和再生的自然机制的新见解都是生物医学和生物技术界的主要兴趣。