Postdoctoral Researcher North Carolina State University Durham, North Carolina
Body of Abstract: Phosphorus is essential for plant metabolism, growth, and development. Because soil phosphorus is largely present in insoluble complexes or species, phosphorus is largely biounavailable to plants. Thus, phosphate fertilization is necessary to deliver adequate levels of phosphorus to crops. However, current use of phosphate fertilizers is unsustainable due to its harmful impacts on the environment. More sustainable alternatives or crop improvements to enhance phosphorus use efficiency and management need to be identified to achieve sustainable fertilization of crops. To address this challenge, we have developed a screening platform to evaluate compounds or biomaterials for improvements to cell viability under phosphate-starved conditions. This platform uses 3D bioprinting to reproducibly create single-cell populations of plant cells that can be screened at high throughput for cellular responses to phosphate starvation. Using our platform, we screened sodium silicate for changes to bioprinted cell viability and to whole plant root growth. We found that sodium silicate impaired root growth at key time points and severely impaired early cell viability. Our platform highlights the benefit of screening plant responses at the cellular level to detect early and acute toxicity or harmful effects at single cell level rather than at whole plants. Going forward, our platform will be useful for screening and designing more sustainable alternatives for delivering phosphorus to plant cells.