Cranos Williams
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Data-Driven Plant Science Platform Director, N.C. PSI
Professor
College of Engineering
College of Agriculture and Life Sciences
Department of Plant and Microbial Biology
3320 Plant Sciences Building
Bio
Research Interests: I am currently the director of the EnBiSys Research Laboratory. The EnBiSys Lab is a highly collaborative, multidisciplinary research laboratory, focused on the development of targeted computational and analytical solutions for modeling and controlling biological systems. The solutions we develop are used to build and strengthen the transition from large-scale high-throughput –omics data to highly connected kinetic models in the post-genomic era; models that can be used to attain the depth, understanding, and comprehension needed to manipulate and control biological systems for a defined purpose.
Specific interests in this field include:
– Nonlinear Systems Analysis
– System Identification
– Uncertainty Analysis
– Optimal Experimental Design
– Biological Signal and Data Processing
Patents: S. Chen, L. Ray, N. Cahill, M. Goodgame, and C. Williams, “Method of Image Registration using Mutual Information,” U.S. Patent 7,263,243, Aug. 28, 2007.
Education
Ph.D. Electrical Engineering North Carolina State University 2008
M.S. Electrical Engineering North Carolina State University 2002
B.S. Electrical Engineering NC A&T State University, Greensboro 2001
Area(s) of Expertise
Computational Intelligence, Machine Learning, Dynamic Systems Modeling, Multi-scale Modeling, Data Mining, Gene Regulatory Networks, Metabolic Pathway Modeling
Publications
- Advancing sweetpotato quality assessment with hyperspectral imaging and explainable artificial intelligence , COMPUTERS AND ELECTRONICS IN AGRICULTURE (2024)
- Dynamics of BMP signaling and stable gene expression in the early Drosophila embryo , Biology Open (2024)
- Predicting sweetpotato traits using machine learning: Impact of environmental and agronomic factors on shape and size , COMPUTERS AND ELECTRONICS IN AGRICULTURE (2024)
- Spatiotemporal dynamics of NF-κB/Dorsal inhibitor IκBα/Cactus inDrosophilablastoderm embryos , (2024)
- The Black American experience: Answering the global challenge of broadening participation in STEM/agriculture , PLANT CELL (2024)
- Cellular clarity: a logistic regression approach to identify root epidermal regulators of iron deficiency response , BMC GENOMICS (2023)
- Multiplex CRISPR editing of wood for sustainable fiber production , SCIENCE (2023)
- Compositionality, sparsity, spurious heterogeneity, and other data-driven challenges for machine learning algorithms within plant microbiome studies , CURRENT OPINION IN PLANT BIOLOGY (2022)
- Dynamics of BMP signaling in the earlyDrosophilaembryo , (2022)
- FER and LecRK show haplotype-dependent cold-responsiveness and mediate freezing tolerance in Lotus japonicus , PLANT PHYSIOLOGY (2022)
Grants
The Science and Technologies for Phosphorus Sustainability (STEPS) Center is a convergence research hub for addressing the fundamental challenges associated with phosphorus sustainability. The vision of STEPS is to develop new scientific and technological solutions to regulating, recovering and reusing phosphorus that can readily be adopted by society through fundamental research conducted by a broad, highly interdisciplinary team. Key outcomes include new atomic-level knowledge of phosphorus interactions with engineered and natural materials, new understanding of phosphorus mobility at industrial, farm, and landscape scales, and prioritization of best management practices and strategies drawn from diverse stakeholder perspectives. Ultimately, STEPS will provide new scientific understanding, enabling new technologies, and transformative improvements in phosphorus sustainability.
A Pipeline of a Resilient Workforce that integrates Advanced Analytics to the Agriculture, Food and Energy Supply Chain
One of the grand challenges facing humanity is to secure sufficient and healthy food for the increasing world population. This requires maintaining sustainable cultivation of crop plants under changing climate conditions. Plant roots and soil microbes have been associated since the emergence of plants on land. Nevertheless, the mechanisms that coevolved to control and regulate microbiota associations with healthy plants are largely unexplored. The photosynthetically active green leaf tissues supply assimilated carbon to roots for development and also to feed its associated microbes. To maintain balanced growth, plants have to integrate this underground demand and regulate the rate of photosynthetic CO2 fixation, and sugar allocation needs to be coordinated between root and shoot. Research on plants and their naturally associated microorganisms is therefore in a prime position to provide new perspectives and concepts for understanding plant function, plant performance and plant growth under limited input conditions with a reduced environmental footprint and could also define breeding targets and develop microbial interventions. InRoot aims to: 1. Disentangle the effects of climate and soil type from the impact of root-microbe interactions through transplantation experiments and exploit natural variation to identify the plant genetic components responsible for adaptation to the local microbiota. 2. Identify key bacterial taxa governing the establishment of host-driven microbial networks in the rhizosphere by analysing the microbe-microbe and microbe-host interactions established in tailored synthetic communities (SynComs) with direct consequences on host performance. 3. Define the plant genetic components that control infection of plant roots by ubiquitous and host-specific endophytes using advanced genetic screens and new methods for quantifying root cellular responses to microbes 4. Understand molecular mechanisms integrating root-microbe interactions into whole-plant physiology by investigating systemic physiological responses induced by SynComs using whole plant phenotyping. 5. Predict plant performance as a function of plant and microbiota genotypes by building multiscale models based on genotype, phenotype, and mechanistic data thereby providing knowledge for application. InRoot perspective: Provide knowledge and tools for science-based development of new crop varieties and associated microbial interventions that will improve productivity, reduce the need for fertilizers and pesticides, and alleviate negative environmental impact.
Minimizing crop loss and increasing output, across the food supply chain, will increase the economic viability of US growers and the global economic competitiveness of industry and stakeholder partners. We have assembled a diverse team across different National and International Universities with faculty that have track records of convergent research, education, and outreach. We will be well positioned to implement a Networks of Networks with diverse backgrounds, ethnicities, genders, experiences, and disciplines to drive research and innovation. Students and postdocs will be exposed to hands-on learning, on-farm technology training, cooperative extension, commercialization, industry engagement, and transdisciplinary education to create a highly trained workforce that is equipped to address food security and safety challenges.
Title: Transcriptional and translational regulatory networks of hormone signal integration in tomato and Arabidopsis. PI: Jose M. Alonso (Plant Biology, NCSU), Co-PIs:Anna Stepanova (Plant Biology, NCSU), Steffen Heber (Computer Science, NCSU), Cranos Williams (Electric Engineering, NCSU). Overview: Plants, as sessile organisms, need to constantly adjust their intrinsic growth and developmental programs to the environmental conditions. These environmentally triggered ????????????????adjustments???????????????? often involve changes in the developmentally predefined patterns of one or more hormone activities. In turn, these hormonal changes result in alterations at the gene expression level and the concurrent alterations of the cellular activities. In general, these hormone-mediated regulatory functions are achieved, at least in part, by modulating the transcriptional activity of hundreds of genes. The study of these transcriptional regulatory networks not only provides a conceptual framework to understand the fundamental biology behind these hormone-mediated processes, but also the molecular tools needed to accelerate the progress of modern agriculture. Although often overlooked, understanding of the translational regulatory networks behind complex biological processes has the potential to empower similar advances in both basic and applied plant biology arenas. By taking advantage of the recently developed ribosome footprinting technology, genome-wide changes in translation activity in response to ethylene were quantified at codon resolution, and new translational regulatory elements have been identified in Arabidopsis. Importantly, the detailed characterization of one of the regulatory elements identified indicates that this regulation is NOT miRNA dependent, and that the identified regulatory element is also responsive to the plant hormone auxin, suggesting a role in the interaction between these two plant hormones. These findings not only confirm the basic biological importance of translational regulation and its potential as a signal integration mechanism, but also open new avenues to identifying, characterizing and utilizing additional regulatory modules in plants species of economic importance. Towards that general goal, a plant-optimized ribosome footprinting methodology will be deployed to examine the translation landscape of two plant species, tomato and Arabidopsis, in response to two plant hormones, ethylene and auxin. A time-course experiment will be performed to maximize the detection sensitivity (strong vs. weak) and diversity (early vs. late activation) of additional translational regulatory elements. The large amount and dynamic nature of the generated data will be also utilized to generate hierarchical transcriptional and translational interaction networks between these two hormones and to explore the possible use of these types of diverse information to identify key regulatory nodes. Finally, the comparison between two plant species will provide critical information on the conservation of the regulatory elements identified and, thus, inform research on future practical applications. Intellectual merit: The identification and characterization of signal integration hubs and cis-regulatory elements of translation will allow not only to better understand how information from different origins (environment and developmental programs) are integrated, but also to devise new strategies to control this flow for the advance of agriculture. Broader Impacts: A new outreach program to promote interest among middle and high school kids in combining biology, computers, and engineering. We will use our current NSF-supported Plants4kids platform (ref) with a web-based bilingual divulgation tools, monthly demos at the science museum and local schools to implement this new outreach program. Examples of demonstration modules will include comparison between simple electronic and genetic circuits.