Description du projet
Identifier les principaux régulateurs déterminant l’architecture des systèmes vasculaires des plantes
Les systèmes vasculaires des plantes terrestres, comme ceux des humains, sont un réseau compliqué de tissus conducteurs qui relient les organes et transportent l’eau, les minéraux, les nutriments et les molécules de signalisation. Les plantes non vasculaires, comme les mousses, possèdent des tissus conducteurs qui semblent être homologues aux tissus vasculaires des plantes vasculaires. Cependant, de nombreuses questions restent ouvertes sur les régulateurs moléculaires du développement des tissus conductifs et vasculaires. Le projet PIPELINES, financé par l’UE, identifiera les molécules conservées spécifiques aux tissus vasculaires et conducteurs et déterminera l’ensemble ancestral de régulateurs suffisant pour déclencher les événements de spécification et de différenciation chez les plantes. Les connaissances acquises permettront de documenter l’ingénierie tissulaire pour de nombreuses applications.
Objectif
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.
Champ scientifique
Mots‑clés
Programme(s)
- HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC) Main Programme
Régime de financement
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC GrantsInstitution d’accueil
9052 ZWIJNAARDE - GENT
Belgique