The Department of Botany has received a $4.1 million grant from the National Science Foundation to research the functions of plant genes in seedlings.
The interdisciplinary team, led by Botany Professor Edgar Spalding, will be using computer technology to analyze images of seedling growth and development.
There are many tools available to study and characterize genotypes, but there are few tools or technology to identify the growth and development -- "phenotypes" -- in plants.
Spalding's team is working to provide such tools.
In collaboration with Professor Nicola Ferrier (Mechanical Engineering) and Professor Miron Livny (Computer Sciences), the team is using machine vision technologies and computers to study phenotypes of developing seedlings, namely maize and Arabidopsis.
With help form the computational resources at the UW's Center for High Throughput Computing, Spalding's team hopes to map the phenotype displayed by an individual to its genotype.
In this way, the genes controlling aspects of seedling development important in nature and in the cultivated crop may be learned, which is a prerequisite for rational approaches to improving them.
The award was funded by the Plant Genome Research Program in the NSF.
For more information:
The team includes:
- Durham Brooks, Tessa L. (Co-PI) Doane College (Biology)
- Ferrier, Nicola J. (Co-PI) University of Wisconsin (Mechanical Engineering)
- Miller, Nathan D. (Co-PI) University of Wisconsin (Botany)
- Settles, A. Mark (Co-PI) University of Florida (Horticultural Sciences)
- Spalding, Edgar P. (PI) University of Wisconsin (Botany)