Waves, oscillations and patterns of plant hormones

Project description

It has been known for a decade that some genes controlled by auxin (the most studied plant hormone) present oscillatory acitivity in plant roots. It is also well known that a key signalling pathway used by auxin to trigger genetic responses includes a negative feedback loop. Hence, this pathway is able to induce spontaneous oscillations, even under steady inputs of auxin. On the other hand auxin in plants is essentially never steady, being transported from cell to cell via a complex mechanism involving active transport (rather than diffusion). If the molecular details of auxin transport remain incompletely understood, recently developed fluorescent reporters allow to track auxin distribution in time and space with a resolution never achieved before. In particular, these reporters have been used to produce data sets in which complex spatio-temporal patterns of auxin are recorded with a single cell resolution. Using mathematical modelling and building upon published data, this project will aim to investigate the interplay between auxin signals and the response it triggers via its signalling pathway. The latter can be seen as a signal processing device, but its nonlinear nature makes it difficult to use traditional techniques; the research will include devising new approaches to uncover relevant effects such as resonance or filtering properties.