Farmed plants offer humans sustenance, energy, and medicinal compounds. However, crops encounter various stresses that jeopardize their development and productivity. Biologist Xuehua Zhong from Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis has secured a $1.1 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) aimed at crafting more resilient crops capable of adjusting to shifting environmental conditions and fostering sustainable agriculture.
Zhong and her team are striving to comprehend how plants utilize biomolecular condensates — microscopic compartments within cells that accumulate proteins and nucleic acids — to perceive their surroundings and react appropriately to enhance fitness, resilience, and productivity.
Zhong has previously concentrated much of her research on discovering how plants manage thermal stress, with the ultimate objective of engineering species that are more robust against climate change. In 2024, she was awarded a WashU Global Incubator Seed Grant for her investigations on plant thermal stress. Her new NSF funding will enable her to delve deeper into the effects of nutrient stress, such as deficiencies in nitrogen.
“Plants and humans adopt distinct approaches to confront stressors,” stated Zhong, who holds the title of Dean’s Distinguished Professorial Scholar and is the program director for plant and microbial biosciences at WashU. “Plants must figure out how to handle heat one day and then drought the subsequent day, or another type of stress like nutrient deficiency. They need to swiftly transition between their adaptive mechanisms.”
One method by which plants can react promptly involves activating or deactivating specific genes linked to stress tolerance.
Zhong is an internationally acknowledged authority in the field of epigenetics, the molecular mechanisms that govern gene expression without changing an organism’s essential DNA configuration. She and her team have grown increasingly intrigued by how plants might utilize biomolecular condensates to initiate epigenetic reprogramming and trigger a rapid reaction to nutrient stress. “Biomolecular condensates are emerging as crucial components in detecting and interpreting environmental signals to guide a diverse array of cellular functions,” Zhong remarked.
Her new investigation could pave the way for innovative techniques to engineer biomolecular condensates for enhanced nutrient distribution, growth, and stress resilience. At WashU, Zhong engages with a scientific community led by researchers at the McKelvey School of Engineering and the Center for Biomolecular Condensates that is dedicated to developing technologies, uncovering relevant physical principles, and applying these principles to study and understand how condensates operate in living cells.
Zhong utilizes a common model plant known as Arabidopsis thaliana, or thale cress, but the findings from this research are expected to be broadly applicable across numerous species. Given the significance of biomolecular condensates and epigenetic regulation in various biological processes, comprehending how these condensates reprogram the epigenome to manage differing stresses presents a fundamental question relevant to both flora and fauna.
The new initiative also incorporates a substantial outreach component: Zhong and her team are scheduled to organize a sequence of outreach events to share their research with the public, including the development of science education modules for K-12 students and summer science camp programs for high school students from Missouri and southern Illinois.
“Comprehending how plants handle nutrient stress is vital for creating nutrient-efficient crop varieties and ensuring a sustainable future food supply,” Zhong emphasized.
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