NSF-Grant Funds Plant Biologists' Studies of Molecular Plant Growth
The $2 million, three-year grant will allow researchers at Ohio State and in California to gain a better understanding of how a handful of specific proteins, called transcription factors, influence the genes that control two basic plant processes—flowering and epidermal functioning (epidermal functioning refers to the hairs, pores and pigments in leaf surfaces.)
Transcription factors are incredibly important because they create regulatory networks that essentially tell certain genes what to do and when to do it.
The project is two-fold: In the laboratory the researchers will identify the genes directly controlled by 31 transcription factors known to regulate flowering and epidermal functions in Arabidopsis thaliana, a plant whose entire genome has been sequenced. *
Then the researchers will compare the laboratory results to the results generated by computer programs meant to predict which transcription factors control which genes.
Scientists already know that plants have roughly 2,000 transcription
factors. Lamb believes that understanding how these factors regulate
genes could have a considerable impact on the future of agriculture.
"What we learn by studying Arabidopsis right now may one day be applicable to crop plants, such as improving their nutritive value and perhaps even reducing the use of pesticides," she said.
If the computational results match what Lamb and her colleagues learn from their laboratory work—that is, if the computer program makes accurate predictions about how transcription factors and genes interact—they should be able to decipher the purpose of the other already-known plant transcription facts.
"The transcription factors we're studying in the laboratory
are only a small subset of the facts we know about," Grotewold,
the grant's principal investigator, said.
"It could take decades of laboratory work to analyze all 2,000-some known transcription factors," he continued. "Having the right computational tools that can predict the networks in which the transcription factors we're not studying in the lab participate in would save a lot of time."
The data generated by the grant will be publicly available through the Arabidopsis Gene Regulatory Information Server (AGRIS), AGRIS is online at http://arabidopsis.med.ohio-state.edu.
Lamb and Grotewold are working with co-investigators Ramana Davuluri, a bioinformatics expert, Molecular Virology, Immunology & Medical Genetics, and biologist Betsy Read California State University, San Marcos.
*Arabidopsis is known as the lab rat of plant biology. For the past 10 years, Ohio State and the College of Biological Sciences has been home to the NSF-funded Arabidopsis Biological Resource Center, housed in the Bio Sci Greenhouses, which supplies the researchers from around the world with seed stock and DNA clones from its genome.
Written by Holly Wagner, University Research Communications
Edited by Sandi Rutkowski, College of Biological Sciences Communications
Originally published Autumn 2004
