I remember when I was little, every time I would eat a vegetable, my brother would jump up and say, “Ewww, you just ate a root, it came from under the ground, where all those animals poo and dead bodies go!” And slowly but surely I learned to dislike eating roots; in fact, as I took more and more biology courses through the years, learning about roots always seemed to be the most boring part. They are brown and muddy, they are hairy and weird-looking; I never seemed to understand the importance of roots. They’re almost like parents in the sense that we never appreciate all that we learn and ‘absorb’ from them, never understand the importance of how they help ‘ground’ us, or how they are the basis for how we shine above the ground until we get much older.

Well, researchers at the Ghent University and the Flanders Institute for Technology certainly appreciate and value the importance of roots for plants, as they have come up with extensive information of the mechanisms within roots responsible for creating offshoots.

The first thing VIB researchers discovered is a protein called ACR4. It seems to play the most important part in triggering offshoots. ACR4 receives signals from the environment and helps the formation of root offshoots. Asymmetric cell division induced by the ‘root founder’ cells produces two different types of cells: one that is identical to the parent cell and is a plant ‘stem cell’, and another cell ready to be specialized as a secondary root cell. By conducting a controlled experiment, VIB researchers have identified genes that code for proteins driving asymmetric cell divisions. The ACR4 protein is a receptor that responds to signals to induce asymmetric cell division.

This research opens up multiple doors. Knowledge of how root branching occurs is important for increasing agricultural yields: researchers can produce genetically modified plants optimized for efficient nutrient uptake by increasing the number of root offshoots or produce plants that will conserve energy by reducing the number of root offshoots. Researchers also believe that the similarities between plant and animal stem cells are significant enough that this knowledge may provide a basis for furthering our understanding animal stem cells and may have medical applications.
News Article: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/10/081023144046.htm
Scientific article abstract: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18948541?dopt=Abstract
Question: How might the newfound understanding of the ACR4 gene benefit research in animals, especially helping further stem cell research?