Project description
Identifying key regulators determining the architecture of plant plumbing systems
Land plant vascular systems, like human vascular systems, are a complicated network of conducting tissues that connects the pants organs and transports water, minerals, nutrients and signalling molecules. Non-vascular plants such as mosses have conductive tissues that appear to be homologous to vascular tissues in vascular plants. However, many open questions remain about the molecular regulators of conductive and vascular tissue development. The EU-funded PIPELINES project will identify conserved molecules specific to vascular and conductive tissues and determine the ancestral set of regulators sufficient to trigger specification and differentiation events in plants. The knowledge gained will support tissue engineering for numerous applications.
Objective
Plants contribute up to 80% of all biomass on earth. Despite their staggering diversity; dominant land plants share a highly important characteristic: the presence of a vascular system providing physical support and long distance transport. This is however not a simple binary trait, as some non-vascular mosses contain cells with conductive capacity resembling that of vascular plants. Available evidence indeed suggests that conductive tissues of non-vascular plants are functionally homologous to vascular tissues in vascular plants and can even be compared at a molecular level. However, the molecular players involved in conductive tissue development remain almost completely unknown. Moreover, although key molecular regulators of vascular tissue development have been identified in the model plant Arabidopsis, very few are shown to be functionally conserved across vascular plants. Despite their importance for growth and development, we thus have a limited understanding of the evolutionary conserved regulators of plant plumbing systems.
In PIPELINES, I will consolidate my expertise in single-cell applications and build a dedicated team to identify conserved molecular players specific to vascular and conductive tissues by combining multi-species comparative single-cell and spatial transcriptomics with gene regulatory network inference; and characterize these factors using loss-of-function approaches. By comparing this data, I will determine the ancestral set of regulators sufficient to trigger specification and differentiation events in plants; and validate these through introduction of single-cell sample multiplexing in a heterologous system.
By unravelling the molecular basis of vascular and conductive tissue development and identifying conserved core developmental regulators, the output of PIPELINES will act as a starting point for targeted engineering of vascular tissues; which holds great potential for improving plant biomass and productivity in crop species.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
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CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
This project's classification has been validated by the project's team.
Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
MAIN PROGRAMME
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Topic(s)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
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Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants
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Call for proposal
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Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) ERC-2021-COG
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Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
9052 ZWIJNAARDE - GENT
Belgium
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