Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom - TAIR

Modelling cell division in the Arabidopsis leaf
epidermis
The Arabidopsis leaf epidermis is a tissue consisting of a single layer of cells of
various sizes, shapes and functions, arranged in an intricate two-dimensional
pattern. We aim at understanding this pattern with a combination of time-lapse
imaging and computational modeling techniques.
We have developed the ability to image Arabidopsis seedlings continuously for
up to seven days using time-lapse confocal microscopy. The resulting movies
capture the dynamic nature of the leaf development. From these movies we
extract the information about cell growth, timing of cell divisions and placement
of division walls, which is used to produce an initial descriptive model. We then
gradually replace direct data with hypothetical deterministic rules of cell division
within a growing leaf epidermis, and verify the results by comparing the output
to the data.
The model has already made it possible to test existing theories of how and
when cells divide, and resulted in the falsification, in the case of Arabidopsis
leaves, of several rules previously reported in the literature. We have verified
rules that predict the position of dividing walls in non-differentiated cells. The
model is currently being extended to include rules for the timing of cell division
and the differentiation of stomata. The model thus provides a framework for
understanding how complex patterns of epidermis cells develop and accommodate
differentiated cells, and suggests that the observed complexity may by
an emergent property of a small set of simple, possibly deterministic rules.
89
C38
Saturday 15:00 - 15:15
Systems Biology
Sarah Robinson1
Pierre Barbier de
Reuille2
Samantha Fox1
Grant Calder1
Andrew Bangham2
Przemyslaw
Prusinkiewicz3
Enrico Coen1
1John Innes Centre
UK
2University of East Anglia
UK
3CPSC
University of Calgary
AB
Canada