“Molecular path into plant cellular reprogramming”
Plants display remarkable developmental plasticity and regenerate new tissues and/or organs after injury. Local signals produced by wounding trigger cellular reprogramming in regeneration but molecular mechanisms underlying this control remain poorly understood. We investigate how wound stress activates new transcription to initiate cell fate reprogramming and how chromatin-based mechanisms modulate these transcriptional changes. A group of AP2/ERF transcription factors named WOUND INDUCED DEDIFFERENTIATION1-4 (WIND1-4) act as central regulators of wound-induced cellular reprogramming and our recent work demonstrated that WINDs activate a diverse set of genes to protect and rebuild plant tissues after injury. We have also shown that wounding induces dynamic changes in histone acetylation status to modify gene expression. In this talk I will discuss our latest findings on how histone acetylation and deacetylation modulate gene expression to reprogramme cell fate in regeneration.
Invited by Prof Yves Van de Peer and Prof Lieven De Veylder
Genome editing, cutting-edge technology for a sustainable agriculture