ISU researcher receives grant to conduct research on plant genes and resilience during stress • Iowa Capital Dispatch

Guo received a five-year, $1.8 million grant from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences to support her research. The grant, called the Maximum Research Award for Early Stage Investigators (MIRA), does not fund a specific project or area of ​​research, but funds Guo directly, so she can use the award as she sees fit.

“I can do a lot of things with it, and that freedom is really great, wonderful,” Guo said. “It also means that students and postdocs in the lab can also pursue interesting directions if they have great ideas, so the money can support them because it is not limited.”

Feronia has been “in the spotlight” for about 20 years, and Guo has been exploring it with other groups for almost as long. She said she hopes other researchers approach this work from different perspectives so they can eventually inform other people’s research.

The traditional method of studying what’s going on inside a plant involves putting it all together and comparing it to another plant, but this could potentially cause scientists to miss important information, Guo said. With the help of the grant, the team is instead using single-cell RNA sequencing to study the gene in the different types of cells that make up plants.

Using the roots of Arabidopsis thaliana, or watercress, Guo and her team are working to partially, rather than completely, disrupt the gene to see how the plant fares. The plant’s root contains the Feronia gene in different cell types, which she says has opened up a world of possibilities for studying the gene’s function in different areas and, ultimately, perhaps using that knowledge to design plants that grow better in worse conditions.

Guo conducts his work with graduate and undergraduate students in partnership with Caltech assistant professor Trevor Nolan, also an ISU alumnus.

In addition to the research itself, Guo said she will use the grant funds to expand outreach efforts both on and off campus. She will encourage one group to come and check out the lab where the students are working, to introduce them to real-world research early and to find others who might want to get involved.

Guo will also hire science teachers to help conduct research through a summer program offered by the university where they can work in a lab. Guo said that having worked with both groups before, the younger students and high school teachers bring a lot of curiosity to the lab and often ask questions she never thought to think about.

“If you work in the lab too long, there are some questions you forget to ask, but they bring a fresh perspective, fresh ideas, and that’s great,” Guo said.

She said she will also create a class for undergraduate students, mostly freshmen, to teach them research and laboratory techniques.

As the effects of climate change become increasingly clear, Guo said it is more important than ever that crops can produce larger yields even if they are in less than ideal conditions. The ultimate goal of this research is to create a more food-secure world and to help young scientists further develop their careers by completing and publishing their work on this important topic.

“Plants will take a long time to develop if we just leave them alone, and their learning curve isn’t that steep, is it?” – said Go. “So we need to really make that process easier…understand how plants respond to this and come up with something that we can try to engineer plants to help them adapt to this climate change that’s happening more and more often.”