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Growing pains: using systems approaches to study lateral root development

University of Nottingham
le 12/03/2010 à 09:15

Résumé

The Centre for Plant Integrative Biology (CPIB) are creating a virtual root to serve as an exemplar for using Integrative Systems Biology (ISB) to model multi-cellular systems. One of the CPIB research programmes examines the initiation, patterning and emergence of lateral roots. Lateral roots originate deep within the parental root from a small number of founder cells at the periphery of the vascular tissues that must emerge through intervening layers of tissues. The hormone auxin originating from the developing lateral root appears to act as a local inductive signal. Auxin induces the expression of an auxin influx carrier LAX3 in cells directly overlaying new primordia. Increased LAX3 activity reinforces the auxin-dependent induction of a selection of cell wall remodelling enzymes, promoting cell separation in advance of developing lateral root primordia. I will describe recent efforts to employ network and multi-cell scale models of the auxin response pathway through which lateral root patterning and emergence is coordinated with the aim to exemplify how theoretical work informs us about the biological system and aids making testable predictions.