Vision, challenges and opportunities for a Plant Cell Atlas
Jahed Ahmed, Oluwafemi Alaba, Gazala Ameen, Vaishali Arora, Mario A Arteaga-Vazquez, Alok Arun, Julia Bailey-Serres, Laura E Bartley, George W Bassel, Dominique C Bergmann, Edoardo Bertolini, Kaushal Kumar Bhati, Noel Blanco-Touriñán, Steven P Briggs, Javier Brumos, Benjamin Buer, Adrien Burlaocot, Sergio Alan Cervantes-Pérez, Sixue Chen, Bruno Contreras-Moreira, Francisco J CORPAS, Alfredo Cruz-Ramirez, Cesar L Cuevas-Velazquez, Josh T Cuperus, Lisa I David, Stefan de Folter, Peter H Denolf, Pingtao Ding, William P Dwyer, Matthew MS Evans, Nancy George, Pubudu P Handakumbura, Maria J Harrison, Elizabeth S Haswell, Venura Herath, Yuling Jiao, Robert E Jinkerson, Uwe John, Sanjay Joshi, Abhishek Joshi, Lydia-Marie Joubert, Ramesh Katam, Harmanpreet Kaur, Yana Kazachkova, Sunil K Kenchanmane Raju, Mather A Khan, Rajdeep Khangura, Ajay Kumar, Arun Kumar, Pankaj Kumar, Pradeep Kumar, Dhruv Lavania, Tedrick Thomas Salim Lew, Mathew G Lewsey, Chien-Yuan Lin, Dianyi Liu, Le Liu, Tie Liu, Ansul Lokdarshi, Ai My Luong, Iain C Macaulay, Sakil Mahmud, Ari Pekka Mähönen, Kamal Kumar Malukani, Alexandre P Marand, Carly A Martin, Claire D McWhite, Devang Mehta, Miguel Miñambres Martín, Jenny C Mortimer, Lachezar A Nikolov, Tatsuya Nobori, Trevor M Nolan, Aaron J Ogden, Marisa S Otegui, Mark-Christoph Ott, José M Palma, Puneet Paul, Atique U Rehman, Maida Romera-Branchat, Luis C Romero, Ronelle Roth, Saroj K Sah, Rachel Shahan, Shyam Solanki, Bao-Hua Song, Rosangela Sozzani, Gary Stacey, Anna N Stepanova, Nicolas L Taylor, Marcela K Tello-Ruiz, Tuan M Tran, Rajiv Kumar Tripathi, Batthula Vijaya Lakshmi Vadde Vadde, Tamas Varga, Marija Vidovic, Justin W Walley, Zhiyong Wang, Renate A Weizbauer, James Whelan
Abstract
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.