Single-Nuclei Sequencing Whole Aquatic Plants to Reveal Novel Nutrient Transport Mechanisms

目标控制环境农业对未来的粮食安全至关重要。该提案旨在微小、简化的水生植物的生物学，以推动该领域的进步。背景-受控环境农业有潜力在日益极端的气候条件、表土退化和水资源短缺的情况下维持粮食生产。然而，它需要优化可持续性。植物通常生长在没有土壤的环境中。相反，它们需要的基本元素是水培的，即在水基溶液中。这些解决方案中的营养物质往往是有限的，能量上昂贵，因此不可持续。提高水培植物的养分吸收效率是实现可持续可控环境农业的关键。水生植物对其营养吸收生物学的适应代表了一种独特的、尚未开发的新遗传学来源。浮萍作为解决方案——实现上述目标的最佳水生植物是浮萍。它们规模小，发展迅速，目前正经历着科学和工业兴趣的复苏。一亿年的进化优化了它们从水中直接吸收营养的能力。这与大多数作物植物完全不同，它们通过根部从土壤中获取养分。对这种生物学的更好理解将为提高受控环境农业的效率开辟新的途径。它还将有助于将浮萍作为这些地区的作物，由于其快速的生长速度和与大豆相当的蛋白质含量，这一领域的投资不断增加。实验策略和科学-浮萍是了解水生植物营养利用的理想选择，这要归功于它们快速增长的科学资源，如基因组序列和基因操作方案。该项目将利用这些技术实现以下目标：利用先进的基因测序技术研究不同浮萍细胞类型中营养转运蛋白的表达。利用生成的数据来识别营养转运体，使浮萍能够有效地从水中吸收营养。利用基因编辑技术验证这些营养转运体的功能，利用基因修饰方法评估其对营养吸收和植物生长的影响。总之，这将揭示浮萍是如何发展其非典型的营养吸收能力的，并探索这些能力是否可以在非水生植物中模仿。利益和利益相关者——提高对浮萍营养吸收的理解有可能：为开发适合水培农业的新作物品种提供信息。这可以提高作物养分利用效率和产量，有助于粮食安全。协助它们作为一种新的作物品种进行部署，目前多个商业和学术团体正在探索其潜力。从根本上推进我们对营养吸收和对水生环境的适应的理解。为了最大限度地发挥影响，我将与澳大利亚领导的国际太空植物联盟密切合作（见LoS和实物支持），该联盟旨在支持美国宇航局的阿尔忒弥斯项目，并利用所取得的进展设计用于地球的超现代种植系统。

Aim - Controlled environment farming will be critical for future food security. This proposal aims to the biology of tiny, simplified aquatic plants to power advances in this sector.Context - Controlled environment agriculture has the potential to maintain food production in the face of increasingly extreme climactic conditions, topsoil degradation, and water scarcity. However, it requires optimisation for sustainability. Plants are often grown in these contexts without soil. Instead, essential elements they need are provided hydroponically, i.e., in a water-based solution. Nutrients in these solutions are often finite, energetically costly, and therefore unsustainable. Improving the nutrient uptake efficiency for plants grown in hydroponics is vital to realising sustainable controlled environment agriculture. The adaptations aquatic plants have made to their nutrient uptake biology represent a unique, untapped source of novel genetics for this.Duckweeds as a solution - The best aquatic plants for achieving the above are duckweeds. They are small, fast-growing, and are experiencing a current resurgence in scientific and industrial interest. 100 million years of evolution have optimised their capacity to take up nutrients from water directly into their shoot. This differs radically from most crop plants, which acquire nutrients from the soil through their roots. A better understanding of this biology will open new avenues to increased efficiency in controlled environment farming. It will also assist duckweed's adoption as a crop for these contexts, an area of growing investment motivated by their rapid growth rate and protein content comparable to soy.Experimental strategy and science - Duckweeds are ideal for understanding aquatic plant nutrient use thanks to their rapidly growing scientific resources, such as genome sequences and genetic manipulation protocols. The project will capitalise on these to achieve the following:Investigate the expression of nutrient transporters in different duckweed cell types using advanced genetic sequencing techniques. Use the data generated to identify nutrient transporters allowing duckweeds to efficiently take up nutrients from water. Use gene editing technology to verify the function of these nutrient transporters and genetic modification approaches to evaluate their impact on nutrient uptake and plant growth. Together, this will reveal how duckweeds have developed their atypical nutrient uptake abilities and explore whether these can be mimicked in non-aquatic plants.Benefits and stakeholders - improved understanding of nutrient uptake in duckweeds has the potential to:Inform the development of new crop varieties optimised for hydroponic farming. This can enhance crop nutrient use efficiency and yield, contributing to food security.Assist in their deployment as a novel crop species, for which multiple commercial and academic parties are now exploring the potential.Fundamentally advance our understanding of nutrient uptake and adaptation to the aquatic environment. To maximise the impact, I will work closely with the Australia-led international Plants for Space consortium (see LoS and in-kind support) which aims to support NASA's Artemis project and use the advances made to design ultra-modern cropping systems for use on Earth.