Mechanisms to generate inter-individual variability from single-cell heterogeneity

Genetically identical individuals, from populations of bacteria to human twins, often behave differently, even though they have identical genes. Plants grow in variable and noisy environments, and even genetically identical plants can show significant variation in gene activation, particularly for stress response genes, which may help populations survive unpredictable conditions but can pose challenges for uniform agricultural practices.

Utilizing a small model plant, Arabidopsis, which produces 1000s of genetically identical seeds each generation, this project aims to understand how the differences in gene activity between genetically identical plants grown in the same conditions are generated by cellular-level processes. It will determine the effects on plant growth and survival of the noisy gene activation by tracking gene activity before and after the addition of stress, and examine whether the level of activation of a pathway before the stress correlates with the survival of a plant after stress. In the future, understanding how plants produce and regulate noise in gene activity will be important for the development of more uniform crops and to understand how populations of wild plants can survive more frequent weather extremes due to climate change.