Laser Ablation Tomography: delivering high-throughput anatomical-scale phenotyping

粮食安全是一个重大的全球问题。到2050年，农作物产量需要翻一番，才能跟上全球人口增长到90亿的步伐。考虑到气候变化的影响和农业在环境上更加可持续的需要，这一目标甚至更具挑战性。开发更好地适应气候变化的作物至关重要。DNA技术(称为基因组学)的进步正在帮助我们彻底改变我们开发能够更好地适应不同环境的作物的能力。然而，我们对植物(部分)形状的成像能力(称为表型分析)是一个主要的瓶颈。例如，组成根或叶的细胞的形状和大小对植物的功能效率有重大影响。然而，到目前为止，植物科学家还不可能对数千种植物进行筛选，以发现选择新的改良植物品种所需的植物细胞形状和大小的差异。该项目计划采用一种革命性的新型成像方法(称为激光消融断层扫描或LAT)，这是美国最近开发的一种方法，首次使科学家能够快速筛选数千种植物样本，了解细胞大小和形状的变化。与现有物理或光学切片方法相比，后者具有许多优点。例如，它比传统的手工分割方法更快、更容易、更精确，并且还提供3D(而不是2D)信息。因此，LAT提供了独特的机会，利用全新的基于细胞形状的推理来选择产量更高和/或对环境胁迫有弹性的作物。例如，我们将使用LAT来研究与粮食安全相关的许多生物学问题，包括筛选新品种的小麦，以寻找根、茎、叶、花和种子中细胞的形状和大小的变化；以及了解植物细胞如何对内涝或细菌感染做出反应。为了最大限度地获得信息并培训研究人员，我们将在一座名为霍斯菲尔德设施的专门研究大楼中建立新的LAT设备。该设施拥有一支拥有出色服务记录的专家团队，支持英国和欧洲的科学家使用相关形式的基于X射线的断层扫描(简称CT)对作物和其他生物材料进行成像。专家人员还将探索LAT的其他应用，例如土壤、食品和生物医学样本。LAT设备的可用性对于早期职业研究人员以及在产业界和学术界的项目合作伙伴之间建立新的合作关系，从而增强英国的能力也将至关重要。

Food security represents a major global issue. Crop production needs to double by 2050 to keep pace with a global population increasing to 9 billion. This target is even more challenging given the impact of climate change and the need for agriculture to become more environmentally sustainable. Developing crops better adapted to climate change is essential. Advances in DNA technologies (termed genomics) are helping revolutionise our ability to develop crops better able to adapt to different environments. However, our ability to image the shape of (parts of) plants (termed phenotyping) represents a major bottleneck. For example, the shape and size of the cells that make up a root or leaf have a major effect on how efficiently a plant functions. However, it has not been possible for plant scientists to screen thousands of plants to detect differences in plant cell shape and size needed to select new improved plant varieties, to date. This project proposes to employ a revolutionary new type of imaging approach (called Laser Ablation Tomography or LAT) which has recently been developed in the USA that, for the first time, allows scientists to rapidly screen thousands of plant samples for variation in cell size and shape. LAT has many advantages over existing physical or optical sectioning methods. For example, it is much faster, easier and more precise than traditional hand sectioning methods and also provides 3D (rather than 2D) information. Hence, LAT provides unique opportunities to select crops with increased yield and/or resilience to environmental stresses employing entirely new cell shape-based reasoning. For example, we will use LAT to look at many biological questions of relevance to food security including screening new varieties of wheat for variation in the shapes and sizes of cells in roots, stems, leaves, flowers and seeds: and understanding how plant cells respond to water logging or bacterial infection.In order to maximise access and train researchers we will base the new LAT equipment in a specialised research building termed the Hounsfield Facility. This facility has an expert team of staff with an excellent track record of service supporting UK and European scientists using a related form of X-ray based tomography (termed CT) to image crops and other biomaterials. The expert staff will also explore other applications of LAT to study, for example, soil, food and biomedical samples. The availability of the LAT equipment will also be critical to early career researchers and establishing new collaborations between project partners with both industry and academia, thereby enhancing UK capabilities.