Vision, challenges and opportunities for a plant cell atlas

Abstract

Funding Information: The PCA community-building activities are funded in part by the National Science Foundation grant numbers MCB-1916797 and MCB-2052590, Carnegie Institution for Science, and BASF. We thank Emily Fryer, Nick Melosh, Heather Meyer, Jason Thomas, Terri Tippets, Renate Weizbauer, Zhiyong Wang and Kangmei Zhao for helping with organizing the first work-shop. We thank Emily Fryer and Julie Gosse at the Science Editors Network for developing the PCA website. We are grateful to the first PCA workshop steering committee members Jim Haseloff, David Jackson, Edward Marcotte, John Marioni, Marisa Otegui, Alberto Salleo, Waltraud Schulze, Edgar Spalding, Michael Suss-man, Marja Timmermans and HS Philip Wong for their guidance and support. We thank Rachel Shahan, Shouling Xu, Kevin Cox and Erin Zess for their input in developing the manuscript. Some images in the figures were created with BioRender.com. National Science Foundation- 1916797- David W Ehrhardt, Kenneth D, Birnbaum, Seung Yon Rhee; National Science Foundation- 2052590- Seung Yon Rhee. Funding Information: Industry is another potential source of funding. Over 70% of applied research and development in the US is funded by industry (Khan et al., 2020). A thorough understanding of plant systems is essential for designing effective agro-biotech solutions leading to new crop varieties, and to innovative crop protection products that can leverage sustainable food production. A partnership with the PCA initiative would accelerate development of new solutions for customers of the agbiotech industry. Thus, funding and collaborations, ranging over multiple disciplines and countries, and multiway interactions amongst academia, industry and philanthropy will be essential to realize the vision of the PCA. Publisher Copyright: © Jha et al.With growing populations and pressing environmental problems, future economies will be increasingly plant-based. Now is the time to reimagine plant science as a critical component of fundamental science, agriculture, environmental stewardship, energy, technology and healthcare. This effort requires a conceptual and technological framework to identify and map all cell types, and to comprehensively annotate the localization and organization of molecules at cellular and tissue levels. This framework, called the Plant Cell Atlas (PCA), will be critical for understanding and engineering plant development, physiology and environmental responses. A workshop was convened to discuss the purpose and utility of such an initiative, resulting in a roadmap that acknowledges the current knowledge gaps and technical challenges, and underscores how the PCA initiative can help to overcome them.Peer reviewe