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Updated: Nov 18, 2025
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A Telemetric, Gravimetric Platform for Real-Time Physiological Phenotyping of Plant–Environment Interactions
Published on: August 5, 2020
12.2K
Multiscale plant modeling: from genome to phenome and beyond
Megan L Matthews1,2,3, Amy Marshall-Colón2,3,4
1Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801 USA.
Emerging Topics in Life Sciences
|February 5, 2021
Summary
Multiscale modeling is crucial for understanding plant complexity and predicting responses to climate change. This approach integrates biological scales to reveal emergent properties for improved plant engineering.
Area of Science:
- Plant biology
- Computational biology
- Systems biology
Background:
- Plants exhibit complex regulatory mechanisms across multiple biological organization levels.
- Conventional single-level approaches (genome, transcriptome, metabolome) limit prediction of emergent properties.
- Mathematical models aid in exploring biological pathways and knowledge gaps.
Purpose of the Study:
- To review recent advancements in plant multiscale modeling.
- To explore insights from microbial system models for plant modeling.
- To discuss computational tools and future directions in plant multiscale modeling.
Main Methods:
- Literature review of plant multiscale modeling developments.
- Analysis of microbial multiscale models for transferable concepts.
- Examination of computational resources and tools for multiscale model development.
Main Results:
- Summary of current plant multiscale modeling techniques and applications.
- Identification of successful multiscale modeling strategies from microbial systems.
- Overview of available computational tools and resources for building multiscale models.
Conclusions:
- Multiscale modeling is essential for predicting plant emergent properties and responses to environmental changes.
- Integration across biological scales is key to understanding plant adaptation and engineering.
- Future research should focus on advancing computational tools and interdisciplinary approaches for plant multiscale modeling.
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