Jos Käfer, Adam Bewick, Amélie Andres‐robin, Garance Lapetoule, Alex Harkess, José Caïus, Gabriel Marais, Bruno Fogliani, Gildas Gâteblé, Paula Ralph, Claude Depamphilis, Franck Picard, Charlie Scutt, James Leebens‐mack
Amélie Andres Andres-Robin, Mathieu C. A. Reymond, Antoine Dupire, Virginie Battu, Nelly Dubrulle, Gregory G. Mouille, Valérie Lefebvre, Jérome Pelloux, Arezki Boudaoud, Jan Traas, C.P. Scutt, Patrick Gaboriau
Fanny Moreau, Emmanuel Thévenon, Robert Blanvillain, Irene Lopez-Vidriero, Jose Manuel Franco-Zorrilla, Renaud Dumas, François Parcy, Patrice Morel, Christophe Trehin, Cristel C Carles
article
Development (Cambridge, England), 2016, 143 (7), pp.1108-19. ⟨10.1242/dev.127365⟩
Aurelie C M Vialette-Guiraud, Michael Alaux, Fabrice Legeai, Cedric Finet, Pierre Chambrier, Spencer C Brown, Aurelie Chauvet, Carlos Magdalena, Paula J Rudall, C.P. Scutt
Comparative floral genetics of Petunia hybrida and Arabidopsis thaliana
Coordinator : Michiel VANDENBUSSCHE. Personnel involved : Patrice Morel, Pierre Chambrier, Suzanne Rodrigues Bento et Marie Monniaux.
We are comparing the mechanisms that control flower development in the model plants Petunia and Arabidopsis, which belong to two very large flowering plant groups, respectively termed the asterids and rosids. A whole genome duplication that occurred shortly before the separation of the asterid and rosid lineages provided extra copies of genes, some of which were then free to evolve novel functions.
Accordingly, we find that numerous differences in flower development mechanisms have evolved between Petunia and Arabidopsis. These differences typify the tremendous diversity of floral form to be found throughout the asterid and rosid clades today, which together contain the majority of living land plant species.
Petal development in Petunia
Coordinator : Marie MONNIAUX (personal website). Personnel involved : Quentin Cavallini-Speisser, Patrice Morel, Pierre Chambrier, Suzanne Rodrigues Bento et Michiel Vandenbussche.
Petals are a key innovation during flower evolution since they attract pollinators, resulting in a directed and efficient pollination. We study petal development in Petunia, where petals are fused in a tube that opens with brightly coloured limbs. We aim to understand the processes of tube and limb development, which are relatively independent. In particular, we address how the cellular layers of the petals coordinate their growth to generate petals with a given shape and size. For this we use insertion mutants and transgenic plants, and several techniques such as genetics, histology, transcriptomics and microscopy.
The origin and early evolution of the flowering plants
Coordinator : Charlie SCUTT. Personnel involved : Léa Rambaud-Lavigne et Pierre Chambrier.
We are studying the genetic modifications that led to the evolution of several specific characteristics of the flower, including the carpel, outer ovule integument, perianth, and bisexual reproductive axis. To do this, we are comparing the flowering plants with their sister group the living gymnosperms (cycads, conifers, gnetophytes and Ginkgo biloba). Within the flowering plants, we work particularly on early diverging lineages such as those of Amborella trichopoda and the Nymphaeales, but also on the model species Arabidopsis thaliana for the wealth of genetic tools available. We are collaborating with researchers specialised in molecular evolution, in particular to try to reconstruct the order-of-acquisition of the specific characteristics of the flower, which may help us identify the group of extinct gymnosperms from which the flowering plants first emerged. This objective corresponds to one of the great unanswered questions of evolutionary biology, often termed "Charles Darwin’s Abominable Mystery".