Seed morphomechanics, from 1D toy model toward accurate numerical simulations - Olivier Ali (Laboratoire de Reproduction et Développement des Plantes, ENS Lyon)

Mechanical stresses within growing tissues are key regulators of morphogenesis. In plants, they trigger two main antagonist responses: cell wall stiffening & expansion. Combined together, these two mechanisms constitute a mechano-sensitive incoherent feed-forward loop. In a first part, we will see how, through a minimalist 1D model, such an ubiquitous regulatory loop can account for seed size regulation in both wild type plants and size-impaired mutants. Since there is more to shape than size, we will then see to what extend pressure-induced stresses in seed coat can provide mechano-sensitive cells with symmetry-related cues. And finally, we will evoque how to implement and test such models on "real-life" systems extracted from confocal acquisitions.

Contact: Irène Wang