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Integrative imaging of plant roots during symbiosis with mycorrhizal fungi


EMSL Project ID
60956

Abstract

I. BACKGROUND AND MOTIVATION
The overall goal of this project is to develop an optical imager that can elucidate the symbiosis
between plant roots and arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi, including: (1) the site and
development of each symbiont, (2) the compartmentalization of key metabolic reactions, and (3)
rates and direction of nutrient exchange during symbiosis. To meet this goal, we propose
the integration of three imaging modalities onto a single platform, namely: interferometry
for localizing and phenotyping the symbiosis (Goal 1) with light-sheet (LS) fluorescence (Goal 2)
and Raman (Goal 3) imaging of metabolic reactions and nutrients at low-phototoxicity. This
project expands our ongoing research to enable imaging within the multiply scattering root cortex
with sub-cellular resolution. To accomplish this, we will develop hardware that can both illuminate
deep into the root tissue and detect the resulting signal, along with deep learning for
reconstructing low-light images and novel biomarkers. Similar to recent discoveries enabled by
multimodal imaging, we anticipate that our imager will provide new insight into mycorrhizal
symbiosis. We will assess these gains by applying the imager to unmask the multivariate
interactions between mycorrhizal symbionts in soil-simulating microfluidics, which is not
possible with existing instruments (Goal 4). In the following sections, we describe the importance
of this understanding and the technology-gap that has prevented us from attaining it.

Project Details

Start Date
2023-08-18
End Date
N/A
Status
Active

Team

Principal Investigator

Scott Baker
Institution
Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory

Team Members

Maria Harrison
Institution
Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research

Andreas Vasdekis
Institution
University of Idaho