How Mechanical Conflicts Contribute to Organ Growth.

The developmental programming of an organism ensures reproducibility of organ shape and size with accurate robustness. But, how an organ knows when to grow and when to stop is a key question that remains inadequately addressed. Both genetics and mechanics play a role in the maintenance of organ reproducibility and robustness, especially in plants. Mechanical feedback of cells and tissues is necessary for proper organ morphogenesis, but the connection between mechanical status and genetics is not well understood. As plant cells are immobile and linked by cellulose matrix, they need to modulate growth and resolve mechanical conflicts arising due to differential growth. The study proposes to investigate how genes that regulate leaf shape (namely CIN-TCPs) also contribute to growth patterning and mechanical properties of cells. The data generated by live-imaging of organs will be helpful in understanding consequences of genetic regulation of growth on mechanical conflicts to produce robust organ shape in wildtype leaf and cotyledon.
Our work will address a fundamental question in developmental biology. We will work on molecular regulators of growth and their dialogue with the biophysical realm that maintains organ robustness. The work will give us a comprehensive idea of parameters that modulate variability in organ size

Faculty Supervisor:

Daniel Kierzkowski

Student:

Partner:

Indian Institute of Science

Discipline:

Life Sciences

Sector:

Life Sciences (not health); Agriculture and Food; Biotechnology

University:

Université de Montréal

Program: