Project

Vascular development in plants

Code
bof/baf/4y/2024/01/176
Duration
01 January 2024 → 31 December 2025
Funding
Regional and community funding: Special Research Fund
Research disciplines
  • Natural sciences
    • Plant cell and molecular biology
    • Plant developmental and reproductive biology
    • Plant morphology, anatomy and physiology
    • Transcriptomics
Keywords
transcriptional networks plant development vascular tissues
 
Project description

Plants rely on directed cell elongation and cell division for growht. Specifically during vascular development, oriented divisions are required to establish the distinct vascular cell identities. Next, proliferation is crucial to allow the massive expansion in the number of cell files. The main research objective is to understand how plant cells control the proliferation and orientation of their cell divisions. Understanding vascular proliferation is of great interest as vascular tissues generate almost all of the tissues that make up wood in trees, are crucial for source-to-sink transport throughout the plant and make up many edible structures such as fruits, roots and tubers. Moreover, vascular architecture has been linked to the efficiency of water uptake and water storage in dry conditions. As such, this research lays the ground work to understand and exploit how vascular proliferation and architecture can ensure optimal plant growth in a changing environment.