Chemical Cartography: Mapping the Hidden World of Plant Roots — Researchers have leveraged |
UC San Diego and Stanford scientists studied maize plant roots and their metabolites—molecules involved in the plant’s energy production—under different settings, including a control condition and treated with aconitate and succinate . Credit: Dickinson Lab, UC San Diego
“This chemical roadmap provides a resource that scientists can use to find new ways of regulating plant growth,” said Dickinson, a faculty member in the Department of Cell and Developmental Biology. “Having more information about how roots grow could be useful in conservation as we think about protecting our plants in natural environments and making them more sustainable, especially in agriculture.
“To help understand plant roots from the biology side, we needed to find out which chemicals are there,” said Zare. “Our imaging system sprays out droplets that strike different portions of the root and dissolve chemicals at that location. A mass spectrometer collects the droplet splash and tells us what those dissolved chemicals are. By systematically scanning the droplet target spot we make a spatial map of the root chemicals.
“I was surprised by how many chemicals are featured in really distinct patterns,” said Dickinson. “We can see that the plant is doing this on purpose—it needs these molecules in specific regions to grow properly.” The Dickinson lab showed that these TCA metabolites have predictable effects in development, not only in maize, but in another plantas well . This is likely because TCA metabolites are highly conserved—they are made in all plants as well as animals.
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