How do plants read their own shape?
| When |
Jan 19, 2015
from 11:00 to 12:30 |
|---|---|
| Where | Centre Blaise Pascal |
| Attendees |
Olivier Hamant |
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Studies in animal single cells have shown that mechanical cues can affect important cell processes such as cell polarity, cell fate or cell division. Here we take advantage of the simpler plant mechanics to investigate this question in a tissue context. Focusing on the shoot apical meristem, the plant stem cell niche, we found that mechanical signals control the orientation of cortical microtubules, which guide the deposition of cellulose and thus control the mechanical anisotropy of plant cell walls. This in turn supports multicellular morphogenetic events, such as tissue folding, which further consolidates the mechanical stress pattern. More recently, we started to analyze the contribution of mechanical signals in gene expression and cell fate at the meristem. Prospects for this work are numerous and will be discussed in the talk.