A project undertaken at The University of Melbourne, and supervised by Dr Allison van de Meene.
Australian environmental conditions range from hot and dry to temperate and tropical across the continent. With the extremes of climate change, there is an increased chance of severe climate events including drought and flooding. This project aims to investigate how plant roots adapt to these changing climate events. The focus is on studying plants that grow in Australian conditions, either as crop species or native plants that are widespread, as well as examining the model grass species Brachypodium distachyon, which has its genome sequenced and can give insights into genetic, cellular and metabolic changes that may occur in response to different environmental effects.
This study will investigate architectural changes in the root and then focus in on the growing root tips of the plants and the changes that occur at the microscopic scale. We will investigate in detail the cell wall, the barrier between the environment and the plant. To do this, a range of high-end imaging techniques will be used. These include MicroCT for 3D architectural analysis with x-rays, fluorescence microscopy combined with labelling for specific cell wall components to brightly illuminate structures of interest, and electron microscopy to magnify the smallest organelles and structures within tissues and cells. When utilised together, these methods can show relationships and correlation between changes at the cellular and tissue level and the cellular mechanisms of action of these changes. The results from these microscopy studies will be analysed along with changes in the genetic response of the plants by studying changes in the genes that are expressed in the roots. This will be done for the species grown in different drought and watering conditions to understand what changes may be occurring that allow some of these plants to be more resilient to climate change than others.