Organ development requires regulated spatial and temporal coordination of stem cell division, tissue differentiation, and cellular maintenance. Accordingly, dysregulation of this balance can lead to defects in cell behavior, tissue morphogenesis, and organ function. How stem cell behaviors are coordinated during morphogenesis remains a central question in developmental biology. Due to their cell-to-cell mobility, small signaling molecules such as metabolites and lipids are instrumental for multicellular development. However, due to the challenges of identifying and perturbing metabolites in vivo, the specific functions of signaling metabolites in stem cell biology have remained largely uncharacterized. The principal goal of my research program is to identify metabolites that regulate stem cell function and determine their mechanisms of action.
Specifically, my lab applies high spatial resolution metabolomics, chemical genetics, and molecular biology to uncover novel signaling pathways in the Arabidopsis root meristem. We utilize the Arabidopsis root because the full developmental trajectory of stem cells is optically accessible, genetically tractable, and amenable to high-throughput phenotyping. Plants are also abundant producers of diverse metabolites, generating a broad parameter space to investigate the range of metabolite-regulated cellular processes. Importantly, molecular principles governing metabolite control of stem cell behavior can be conserved between plants and animals, with implications for applications ranging from agriculture to regenerative medicine. This work has led to the discovery of a number of new signaling molecules that regulate stem cell decisions.