EAGER: Emergent properties governing robustness in regulatory networks important for cell, tissue, and organ function

植物作为食物、纤维、住所和燃料的主要来源，对人类生活的方方面面都至关重要。植物工程需要改变游戏规则的进展，以有效和可持续地增加作物产量，满足不断增长的人口的需求。植物生长和生物量的调节依赖于干细胞的持续生成，干细胞分化形成植物的所有细胞、组织和器官。了解干细胞自我更新及其分化的空间和时间控制对于产生可预测的结果和根据我们未来的需求重新设计植物至关重要。目前，已知的是，细胞群根据位置信息分化并显示功能，这些局部细胞间的相互作用驱动细胞特异性基因表达模式。然而，迄今为止，对细胞重新编程的质疑一直受到操纵单个细胞的挑战的限制。这一急切的奖项将导致新技术进步的发展，使直接研究器官形成期间的植物细胞特征成为可能。该项目将为博士后、研究生和本科生提供跨学科和融合研究培训。这项研究将利用3D生物打印、定量图像分析和单细胞转录学，解决以下问题：在植物器官形成过程中，细胞间的交流、图案化形成和健壮性涉及哪些新出现的系统级特征？因此，通过将3D生物打印与单细胞转录组学相结合，该建议将提供一种创新的方法来研究对植物发育过程至关重要的最小线索、位置效应和信号通路，如单细胞中的细胞识别或分化。这项研究将拓宽对各种信号如何与强大的发展计划相结合的理解，并获得可能导致发现新模式和形式的知识。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Plants are critical for all aspects of human life as the primary source of food, fiber, shelter, and fuel. Game-changing advances are needed for plant engineering to effectively and sustainably increase crop production and meet the demands of a growing population. Regulation of plant growth and biomass is dependent on the continuous generation of stem cells that differentiate to form all the cells, tissues, and organs of the plant. Understanding the spatial and temporal control of stem cell self-renewal and their differentiation is critical for generating predictable outcomes and redesigning plants for our future needs. At present, it is known that groups of cells differentiate and display functions in response to positional information, and those local cell-to-cell interactions drive cell-specific gene expression patterns. However, interrogating cellular reprogramming has thus far been limited by the challenge of manipulating individual cells. This EAGER award will lead to the development of novel technological advances that will enable the direct study of plant cell characteristics during organ formation. This project will combine interdisciplinary and convergent research training for postdocs, graduate, and undergraduate students. It will be coupled with professional development by means of established and ongoing outreach activities (i.e., including a summer internship for underrepresented minority undergraduates) to build the skill sets needed for tomorrow’s workforce.This research, exploiting 3D bioprinting, quantitative image analysis, and single-cell transcriptomics, will address the following question: What are the emergent system-level characteristics involved in cell-to-cell communication, patterning formation, and robustness that instruct cell identity and differentiation during plant organ formation? Accordingly, by combining 3D bioprinting with single-cell transcriptomics, this proposal will offer an innovative approach to study the minimal cues, positional effects, and signaling pathways key for plant developmental processes such as cell identity or differentiation in single cells. This research will broaden the understanding of how various signals are integrated with robust developmental programs, and this gained knowledge that could lead to the discovery of new patterns and forms.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.