The mission of the VIB/UGent department of Plant Systems Biology (PSB) is to
understand the molecular mechanisms involved in plant growth and development. In this
perspective, the Root Development group studies the development of the root system,
crucial for water and nutrients acquisition. Lateral Root Initiation (LRI) leading to root
branching is a key process insuring these functions. Even though different species present
similarities in the LRI, it is unclear whether these mechanisms were conserved, or evolved,
during evolution. Most of the knowledge has been worked out in the model plant Arabidopsis.
Its transfer to other plants is not straightforward. Events such as genome duplications and
plant adaptation to their environment led to gene diversity complicating the search for
homologies only based on phylogenetics strategies. The goal of the bioinformatics
evolutionary systems biology group is to understand how plant developmental systems work
and evolve.
We propose here a multidisciplinary approach combining biology and bioinformatics tools
to find functional homologues within gene families by correlating their gene expression
regulations during LRI. This work will give us a new view on the evolution of the root
branching strategies in different species but will also help in answering a fundamental
question which is the retention of function along evolution. Additionally, this work can help
translational research and is extendable to other important molecular processes.