G Venugopala Reddy, an assistant professor of plant cell biology at the University of California, Riverside, has received a $1 million grant from the National Science Foundation in the US to investigate how plant stem-cells maintain their identity and how they eventually get specialised into different cell types.

The research, which will focus only on plants, has potential to lead to better insights into how stem cells communicate with each other both before and after they are transformed into specialised cells that lead to the development of different plant organs, according to Reddy, principal investigator of the four-year grant.

He plans to use two powerful methods in his research: One of which helped him identify which genes are active in stem cells; and live imaging, which will allow him to monitor, in real time, how individual proteins interact in living plant cells.

'This research may lead to better insights into stem-cell regulation,' Dr Reddy said. 'This can come about only by understanding how stem cells are made and maintained, and by deciphering which genes are involved and how they function.'

He expects the research to help him understand, at the molecular and cellular levels, what governs and mediates 'cell identity transition,' the process when a cell loses its original identity to become a new type of cell.

Just as animals do, plants also have stem cells. Plant stem cells, which can transform themselves into many other types, give rise to all the cells in the plant. These master cells are found on the tip of the plant's stem.

'These cells are maintained for thousands of years in plants,' said Dr Reddy, who is also a member of UCR's Centre for Plant Cell Biology. 'Scientists want to understand how stem cell identity is maintained in plants for so long and how they transition into other cell types.'

His research will involve, first, isolating stem cells from other cells in a mustard-like plant called Arabidopsis, a model plant species. Next, using special techniques, he will determine which genes are active in the stem cells. Finally, he will use genetic methods to understand how the genes function in networks to specify and maintain stem cells.

He will be joined in the research by some of his postdoctoral researchers, graduate students and undergraduate students. Dr Reddy who joined UCR's Department of Botany and Plant Sciences last year, received his doctoral degree from the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai, India, 1999.

The same year, he received a Jane Coffin Childs Memorial Fund for Medical Research Foundation postdoctoral fellowship to pursue research at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, where he co-developed a live-imaging method to study changes in the rising tip of the plant, where stem cells are most active.