''Evolution of plant architecture through changes in auxin movement control''

Dr Yoan Coudert

Thursday, May 25, 2023
11:00

The successful colonization of land by plants was accompanied by the diversification of their branching architecture. The phytohormone auxin is a major regulator of branch initiation and has a similar inhibitory role in flowering plants and mosses, two major land plant lineages that diverged from their most recent common ancestor several hundred million years ago. PIN-mediated polar auxin transport is crucial for auxin function in flowering plant branching control. Long-range tropic auxin gradients are sustained locally through the regulation of cell-to-cell connectivity at the level of plasmodesmata, although this is comparatively a minor pathway. In the moss Physcomitrium patens, an extant representative of early land plants, PIN proteins have a minor role in leafy shoot branching control and the symplasmic pathway could instead represent the main route for auxin movement in the stem. Using a combination of developmental genetics and computational modeling, we explore the role of symplasmic fields and plasmodesmal gating in auxin movement, and thereby assess their contribution to the evolution of plant morphogenesis.

Jozef Schell seminar room
Technologiepark 71 - 9052 

Invited by Prof Dirk Inzé and Prof Bert De Rybel

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