The mechanisms that coordinate cellular proliferation and three-dimensional positional information during organ development are poorly understood. Accurate regulation of these control mechanisms is important because they affect a diversity of biological events from reproductive development to the cancerous growth of cells. The investigators are using the flowering plant Arabidopsis thaliana to study the coordination of patterning and cell proliferation during the development of the seed pod. The investigators apply molecular genetic and genomic approaches to understand the control of gene expression at the level of transcription. Their work seeks to clarify the role of a family of transcriptional regulatory proteins that coordinate the proliferation of cells that generate ovules, the precursors of the seeds. By turning on and off genes during the development of the seed pod, these transcriptional regulators determine where, when and to what extent seeds will develop within the seed pod. The investigators hope that a better understanding of these biological events will enable the generation of higher yielding seed crops as well as shed light on organ development and cancerous growth in animals. The project also includes training opportunities for postdoctoral researchers and graduate and undergraduate students. Results from the project will be widely disseminated through publication in research journals and the internet. Furthermore, the primary investigator leads an outreach group of University researchers, from professors to undergraduates, that designs and presents hands-on demonstrations in North Carolina classrooms. These visits serve to excite local K-12 students about questions in genetics and developmental biology. This person-to-person contact with children and their teachers will bring an enthusiasm for science and science education to the wider community.
Both animals and plants develop from a single fertilized egg cell. This cell divides many times to generate "daughter" cells that become the cells of the adult organism. What is fascinating is that a single cell can divide and give rise to so many different types of "daughter" cells. The process of making cells different from each other is called differentiation. Understanding differentiation is important because when differentiation goes awry in animal systems cancerous cell types can arise and cause tumors in humans. During development of the adult body in either a plant or an animal each "daughter" cell must coordinate with neighboring cells so that they end up in the correct location. This is how the complicated multicellular bodies of a human or a plant are constructed during development. Developmental biologists refer to this process as pattern formation. Proper pattern formation ensures that our hands and fingers are formed on the end of our forearms and that our head is formed on the top of our neck. Similarly, proper pattern formation is required to form the seeds inside the seedpod within a pea plant. This project has used the flowering plant Arabidopsis thaliana to try to understand the processes of differentiation and pattern formation. We have focused on the development of the seeds within the seedpod. During seed development we studied how genes get turned on or off in a given cell. Regulation of the on/off state of the gene is one way that the cell controls what type of cell it will become. We also studied the role of signals that allow the cells to communicate with each other so that they "know" where they are relative to other cells and then can respond properly. Understanding the regulation of transcription and of cell-to-cell communication is critical to understanding proper development in both plants and animals. In plants this understanding is important to inform our efforts to fight plant disease, as well as to generate plants that are higher-yielding varieties and thus address global concerns of food security. Additionally as plants and animals share many cellular properties, our insights into cell-to-cell communication and the specification of cell type are also relevant to human health problems such and cancerous growth and degenerative diseases. Furthermore, through this project we have trained scientists at the undergraduate, graduate and post-doctoral levels. We have made additional efforts to include students from traditionally under-represented groups in our training efforts and several students from underrepresented groups were trained as a result of the completion of this project. Additionally, we have reached out to students in our local K-12 educational system in an effort to encourage their interest in science. These outreach activities have included visits to K-12 classrooms where we have lead hands-on science demonstrations. We have reached over 1000 students during this project period in face-to-face classroom demonstrations. We also leave resources with the teachers of these classrooms empowering them to continue to use these demonstration materials in future years. Furthermore we have developed educational videos for a 5th or 9th grade student audience that use developmental biology examples to cover aspects of the NC required life sciences core curriculum for these age groups. We have visited local classrooms to screen these videos and interact with grade school students. Additionally, these videos are available to the general public via the internet at: www.youtube.com/channel/UCaUpegXFOPjKWx-rvMp-ijw?feature=watch.
