NSF Fact Sheet

Literary critic Henry Tuckerman wrote 150 years ago, "To analyze the charms of flowers is like dissecting music; it is one of those things which it is far better to enjoy than to attempt to understand."

Well, Mr. Tuckerman, times have changed. To analyze how a flower – or a leaf – forms, a research team headed by computer scientist Eric Mjolsness of the University of California at Irvine is merging genetic data, marker proteins, modification of genes, mathematical models, and computerized visualization to create a "computable plant."

Through an NSF Frontiers in Integrative Biological Research project, the team is focusing on a staple of recent genetic studies, the mustard plant Arabidopsis thaliana, The project will track cell-by-cell changes in the mustard plant's meristem – the tissue in which cells actively divide and then differentiate into specialized cells. With fluorescent proteins marking specific cell types in specially designed transgenic plants, researchers will be able to trace the development of leaves and flowers.

Images of this process will be automatically gathered and analyzed, helping researchers to model patterns in the meristem and to simulate developmental processes under different conditions. Predictions based on the simulations will then be tested in experiments involving mutants and altered hormone levels.

While the project demonstrates how a complex model can predict the experiment and how the experiment can refine the model, it may also prove, Mr. Tuckerman, that it is possible both to enjoy and attempt to understand flowers.

Lead principal investigator (University of California, Irvine):
Eric Mjolsness, (949) 824-3533, emj@uci.edu

Participating institutions:

• University of California, Irvine (Mjolsness, Pierre Baldi)
• California Institute of Technology (Elliot Meyerowitz, Bruce Shapiro)
• Huntington Botanical Gardens (James Folsom)
• Institute for Cytology and Genetics, Novosibirsk, Russia (Nikolay Kolchanov)

Media contact at UC Irvine: Tom Vasich, (949) 824-6455, tmvasich@uci.edu

Total funding (est.), through August 2008: $4,939,322

Helpful web site: Computable Plant Home Page: www.computableplant.org

Award abstract: https://www.fastlane.nsf.gov/servlet/showaward?award=0330786

The FIBR projects announced today include the following:

• "The Evolution of Biological Social Systems"



• "Integrated Ecological and Genomic Analysis of Speciation in Mimulus,"



• "Causes and Consequences of Recombination,"



• "Integrative Studies of Wolbachia-Eukaryotic Interactions: Genomes to Communities and Back,"



• "Do Species Matter in Microbial Communities?"

Return to news release.

Three successive groups of cell divisions – first green, then red, then yellow – are plotted on an image of a meristem.
Image courtesy of V. Gonehal
Select image for larger version
(Size: 80KB)

View the videos:

compuplant1.avi
compuplant1 streaming video

This video shows the development of the shoot apical meristem (SAM) cell membranes, made visible with auxin transporter tagged with fluorescent proteins. Successive images have been computationally scaled to a common size and orientation, taking out the overall movement and growth in order to visualize individual cells and their division by new membranes over a short time interval.
Video courtesy of Marcus Heisler, Meyerowitz Lab, Caltech.

compuplant2.avi
compuplant2 streaming video

This video, a three-dimensional reconstruction, shows cell membranes of the shoot apical meristem.
Video courtesy of Marcus Heisler, Meyerowitz Lab, Caltech.

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