Research

Even more so they adjust the when, where and how many new organs are formed or even whether specific specialized cell fates develop to their environmental conditions. Additionally, like some animals, plants are able to regenerate plant organs after wounding. This remarkable developmental flexibility enables plants to for example invest in root growth where nutrient or water levels are highest, or build a protective barrier against water loss depending on soil drought conditions. In a sense, plant development reflects the behavior of a sessile plant in response to its complex, dynamically varying environment.

In crops, optimized for maximal yield when supplied with large amounts of water, nutrients and pesticides, this developmental plasticity is largely lost, leading to severe crop yield decrease when threatened with environmental hazards. Learning how plants in nature fend for themselves, and how this potential can be harnessed and further enhanced is essential for the generation of future proof crops capable of generating robust yields despite reduced inputs and variable environmental conditions.

Furthermore, since plant developmental trajectories relies on positional cues, rather than strict cell lineage, this opens up opportunities for designing technologies in the lab to alter plant development at will. This can be achieved, for instance, by manipulating plant hormones, engineering synthetic constructs or utilizing gaseous signaling molecules.

The Experimental and Computational Plant Development group studies the basic patterning mechanisms governing plant development as well as the decision strategies used to adapt these to their environment. For this the group makes use of a broad range of approaches ranging from state-of-the-art molecular biology, microscopy, and phenotyping to multi-scale modeling approaches.