Guo received a five-year, $1.8 million grant from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences to support his research. The grant, called the Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award for Early Stage Investigators (MIRA), does not fund a specific project or area of ​​study, but rather funds Guo directly so she can use the award however she needs to.

“I can do a lot of things with it, and the freedom is really, really great, remarkable,” Guo said. “It also means that students and postdocs in the lab can also go in interesting directions if they have great ideas, so the money can support them because it’s not limited.”

Feronia “has been in the public eye” for about 20 years, and Guo has researched it with other groups for nearly that long. She said she hopes other researchers approach the work from different angles so it can eventually inform other people’s research.

The conventional method of learning what’s going on inside a plant involves crushing the whole thing and comparing it to a different plant, Guo said, but that could cause scientists to miss important information. With the grant, the team is instead using single-cell RNA sequencing to study the gene in the different types of cells that make up plants.

Using the roots of arabidopsis thaliana, or thale cress, Guo and her team are working to disrupt the gene partially, rather than in its entirety, to see how the plant fares. The plant’s root has the Feronia gene in different cell types, which she said opened up a world of possibilities to study the functions of the gene in different areas, and ultimately, perhaps plants can grow better in worse conditions using this knowledge.

Guo is working with graduate and undergraduate students and in partnership with California Institute of Technology Assistant Professor Trevor Nolan, also an ISU graduate.

Outside of the research itself, Guo said he will use the funds to expand outreach efforts, both on and off campus. One group he will encourage to come check out the lab and their work is students, to expose them to real-life research earlier and find those who would like to get involved.

Guo will also recruit high school science teachers to come and help conduct research through a summer program the university offers, where they can work in the lab. From working with both groups before, Guo said the younger students and high school teachers bring a lot of curiosity to the lab and often ask questions he hadn’t thought to consider.

“If you work in the lab for too long, some of the questions you forget to ask, but they bring fresh eyes, fresh ideas, and that’s great,” Guo said.

She said she will also develop a class for undergraduate students, especially freshmen, to teach them about research and lab techniques.

With the effects of climate change becoming more apparent, Guo said it is more important than ever that crops become capable of producing high yields even when under less than ideal conditions. Creating a more food secure world is the ultimate goal behind this research, along with helping young scientists further their careers by completing and publishing their work on this important topic.

“Plants take a long time to evolve if left alone, and their learning curve isn’t that steep, is it?” Guo said. “So we need to really facilitate that process … to understand how plants respond to that and find something to try to create in plants, to help them adapt to this climate change that’s happening more often.”