Mechanical forces during protoplast regeneration

Background

Plants, like us humans, sense and respond to mechanical cues, which is believed to play a major role in all aspects of plant biology, like morphology and pathogen defense. Consistently, evidence is accumulating about an important role of physical forces in regenerative processes. Since plants have remarkable developmental capacities, they can even recover a whole plant from a single protoplast (a cell that lacks its cell wall), which is termed protoplast regeneration. During this process, individual plant cells first obtain a stem cell-like state, can subsequently acquire a new cell fate to start dividing and eventually recover the tissue. Even though much is known about Mechanobiology in the animal field, it has not yet been explored how mechanical signals are guiding regeneration processes in plants. Unravelling this mystery is the major goal of this project. We are using plant protoplasts of the model organism Arabidopsis thaliana as a tool to study mechanical signaling and the influence of mechanical stimulation on plant regeneration.

Project description

In the first months of this project, fluorescent Arabidopsis thaliana marker lines will be generated. The promoters of marker genes for different developmental processes, like re-entry of cell cycle, organization of the cytoskeleton or cell wall biosynthesis, will be cloned and fused with fluorescent proteins. Therefore, regeneration of individual protoplasts can be monitored over time on a confocal microscope. Henceforth, development of mechanically stimulated versus unstimulated cells will be compared to establish the role of physical forces on protoplast regeneration.

Contact

Do you have a question about plants and mechanical stimulation, or would you like to join us as a student researcher? Please contact us.