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Meristem function and early organogenesis in Arabidopsis

Reference	BBS/E/J/00000594
Principal Investigator / Supervisor	Professor Robert Sablowski
Co-Investigators / Co-Supervisors
Institution	John Innes Centre
Department	John Innes Centre Department
Funding type	Research
Value (£)	2,239,837
Status	Completed
Type	Institute Project
Start date	02/01/1999
End date	31/03/2017
Duration	218 months

Abstract

Plants recurrently produce new organs and tissues at the apical meristems. In the centre of the meristems, small groups of stem cells continually renew themselves, while some of their descendants are displaced to the periphery of the meristem to form new tissues and organ primordia. The pattern and fate of these primordia are key to establishing plant architecture, which in crops is key to productivity. This project straddles two complementary areas: the specialised features of plant stem cells, and the early stages of organogenesis in Arabidopsis. An important aspect of animal stem cells that has not been explored in plants is how the risk of accumulating mutations in stem cells is managed. We found that the root and shoot stem cells of Arabidopsis are preferentially killed in response to low levels of DNA double strand breaks, suggesting that plants have independently evolved selective death as a stringent mechanism to safeguard genome integrity in stem cell populations. An important next question is the molecular pathway linking the perception of DNA damage and programmed cell death in plants. Our second long term interest is early organogenesis. As cells are displaced from the meristem, they are recruited into new organs, such as floral organs or stem, whose development is controlled by specialised regulatory genes. Using transcriptome analysis, we have identified genes regulate organ growth. This, however, is not sufficient to understand how regulatory genes cause organs to develop with a particular shape. We use quantitative imaging, lineage tracking and modeling to understand how the collective behaviour of cells affects organ shape, and how this behaviour changes in response to regulatory genes.

Summary

unavailable

Committee	Not funded via Committee
Research Topics	Plant Science
Research Priority	X – Research Priority information not available
Research Initiative	X - not in an Initiative
Funding Scheme	X – not Funded via a specific Funding Scheme

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