Unlike many questions in plant physiology that can be studied using cell culture and/or destructive techniques, the integration of plant responses is best studied using non-invasive approaches that allow repeated measurements of the same plant over time.   However, a simple assessment of plant growth is not adequate for addressing whether a plant's productivity and/or metabolic functionality are enhanced or diminished by certain interventions, either at the genetic level or chemically induced. Even standard protocols of functional plant biology often do not provide a complete picture of this relationship as regulation of plant resources between target tissues and organs is highly integrative and interactive and often changing in response to environmental cues.  At an organismal scale, we know there are key regulatory controls within plant metabolism that can be communicated back across scales of the whole plant via long-distance transport of hormones and/or metabolites acting as signals to regulate this relationship.  Changes in plant function can manifest over timescales from milliseconds at the cellular level to years at the ecosystem level.  New technologies  are needed that can address the integrative network of such systems by allowing rapid and repeated measurements for visualization and quantification of molecular movement and disposition of major plant nutrients, as well as other minerals across scales from the entire plant down to cellular levels.  Short-lived radiotracers used with in vivo imaging and ex vivo radiometabolomic techniques can provide a unique opportunity in plant science to unravel some of the many complex physico-chemical and biochemical processes that exist both within plants, across scales from the whole-plant down to cellular metabolism, and between plants and their surrounding environment.  This talk will address the maturity of the field and future technological challenges and speak to a vision of how this field can better serve a system-level understanding of plant growth relevant to global issues on sustainable energy, environment and agriculture.  This research is supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Biological and Environmental Science under contract DE�AC02�98CH10886.

Radioistopes in plant science: Meeting global challenges in sustainability

240th National Meeting (2010)

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.