Nara Institute of Science and Technology

Ritsumeikan University

The University of Tokyo

National Institutes of Natural Sciences

Osaka Electro-Communication University

Summary of Presentations

A research group led by Professor Keiji Nakajima, Assistant Professor Tatsuaki Goh,Nara Institute of Science and Technology, Professor Yen-Wei Chen,Ritsumeikan University, Professor Masahiko Inami, Assistant Professor Takaaki Yonekura,The University of Tokyo, Assistant Professor Yohei Kondo,The National Institutes of Natural Sciences, Lecturer Yutaro Iwamoto,Osaka Electro-Communication University has precisely measured the behavior of several hundred cells driving root growth in plants, and has developed a technology to present the obtained numerical data in an intuitive format for human interpretation. They have developed a technology that integrates the vast amount of numerical data obtained by precisely measuring the behavior of hundreds of cells that drive plant root growth and presents it in a format that can be intuitively interpreted by humans. This technology was achieved through the fusion of a microscope system that automatically tracks root tips and records cellular dynamics in four dimensions, including the passage of time, a program that uses artificial intelligence to convert image information into numerical data, and human augmentation engineering that presents complex numerical data in a format suitable for human vision and hearing.

This technology paves the way for the development of a "human-machine collaborative" approach to research, in which the acquisition and quantification of vast amounts of image data that far exceed human processing capacity is mechanized, and the resulting data is interpreted by skilled researchers based on their knowledge and experience. This will make it possible to precisely study how root growth changes in response to variations in the growing environment and genetic differences. Since root growth greatly contributes to the growth and adaptability of plants, including crops, to the environment, the results of this research will have a significant impact in both basic and applied fields.

The results of this research have been published as an open access article in Plant and Cell Physiology.

Right: Analysis of cell lineage (dotted lines) and length (colored lines) plotted along the time axis.
Left: Synchronous division within each cell line produces a population of cells of similar size.

For more information, please visit the website of Nara Institute of Science and Technology (NAIST).

Journal

Journal name	Plant and Cell Physiology
Title of paper	In-depth quantification of cell division and elongation dynamics at the tip of growing Arabidopsis roots using 4D-microscopy, AI-assisted image processing, and data sonification processing, and data sonification