99th ESA Annual Meeting (August 10 -- 15, 2014)

WK 24

Visualization with Radioisotopes Gets to the Root of Plant/Microbe Metabolite Transfer

Recent advances have enabled imaging technologies to visualize plant function, albeit at both extremes of the temporal and spatial scales.  Filling this scaling gap, visualization and quantification of whole-plant dynamic translocation are being developed to address processes within plants and between plants and their environment.  Likewise, radioisotope tracers can be used to image microbes biomass, microbe function in nutrient uptake, and the metabolic activity of microbes. This workshop will provide participants an overview of new in vivo technologies associated with radionuclide imaging of dynamic transport and exchange of metabolites and nutrient within a plant, between plants, between plant and microbe and the extent of soil fungal biomass. Although radionuclide imaging presently provides insight into biological processes pertinent to medical health care, it was originally developed for plant studies.  Plant-environment studies can again use radioisotope labeling with recently specialized radionuclide detection and imaging systems to study soil-microbe-plant-atmosphere interactions.  Development of technology and methodologies using radioisotope detection techniques such as positron emission tomography (PET) and single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) will be discussed as they offer different capabilities.  Several applications of radioisotope tracers will be presented to show the breadth of possible questions that this technology can address. The kind of qualitative and quantitative data and possible analyses will be demonstrated, including in vivo real-time video imaging of transport. Participants will be able to explore possible 2-D and 3-D visualizations of previously acquired short-lived radioisotopes data and explore the range of possibility and quantitative data analysis.  Additionally, the workshop will engage participants in new ways to think about their own research to broaden the application of the technology to new research areas.