̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - flower

Plants increase flower production within a day of soil nutrient application

Anonymous — Tue, 23 Jan 2018 10:07:42 +0000

A team of plant scientists examined the processes through which plants are able to pass on information about the external environment from the roots to the new shoots. ̽��ֱ��results showed that increased soil nutrients leads to a response in stem cells in the shoots in less than 24 hours.

Experiments showed that this rapid response occurred both in vitro at the microscopic level and ex vitro with entire plants beginning to increase the rate of stem cell growth and flower development in response to the application of nitrogen in the form of nitrate.

̽��ֱ��scientists say that the study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, could contribute to improving crop yields by refining timing of fertiliser application and selective plant breeding.

Plant stem cells Stem cells in plants have the same function as stem cells in animals. They are undifferentiated cells that are capable of developing into specialised organ cells, such as leaves or flowers. Plant stem cells are located in the meristems of plants (growing tips of roots and shoots) and supply precursor cells from which the different parts of a plant grow from.

First author of the paper, Dr Benoit Landrein said that it was already well established that the availability of nitrate can affect various aspects of plant development. While it was known that plant hormones called cytokinins were involved in this root-to-shoot communication, the exact role of cytokinins in mediating the response of the meristem (the structure that produces all of the aerial organs of plant) to mineral nutrients had not been described before.

What are cytokinins? Cytokinins are a class of plant hormones that control many different aspects of plant development and are involved in the response of the plants to environmental signals. ̽��ֱ��hormone notably acts as a messenger between the plant’s roots and its shoots, communicating the availability of soil nutrients detected by the roots to the rest of the plant.

“Through this study, we provide an integrative model of the response of the meristem to a key environmental signal by showing that the cytokinins produced in the root in response to nutrients can modify the pool of stem cells in the meristem, which leads to a rapid change in the rate of flower production,” Dr Landrein said.

“Within one day of the root cells detecting additional nitrate, the cytokinin hormone precursors had travelled through the plant and converted to active hormones at the shoot meristem, which started influencing the shoot’s growth. ̽��ֱ��speed of this process was very surprising – the roots had not only responded to the change in environment themselves, they had rapidly communicated this information from the roots to the stem cells at the very top of the plant. We observed shoot meristem cells were starting to respond within 24 hours of the application of nitrate.”

Dr Landrein is a member of the research groups of Professor Henrik Jönsson, Dr James Locke and Professor Elliot Meyerowitz, which are working to increase our understanding of how cellular level processes in plants are controlled by gene regulatory networks, hormone transport and signalling, cell growth and division. Professor Jönsson said that while this latest research was undertaken in the plant Arabidopsis, the findings can be applied in future to crops.

“This research provides us with improved insight into how mineral nutrients influence plant architecture and could be used to better understand plant response to environmental inputs and to develop cultivars with increased yield. Crops where the same cytokinin action between roots and shoots occurs could significantly benefit from this. For example, genes involved in the regulation of cytokinins have been mapped in rice and maize and this knowledge could be utilised to select for plants with higher seed yields.”

	Arabidopsis Arabidopsis is a member of the brassica family, which includes common commercially grown crops such as oilseed rape, cabbages, kale and Brussels sprouts. While recognised by most people as a weed that is commonly seen growing on roadsides, Arabidopsis was one of the first plants to have its entire genome mapped and is used as a model for studying plant biology.

This research has been published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: Nitrate modulates stem cell dynamics in Arabidopsis shoot meristems through cytokinins. Benoit Landrein, Pau Formosa-Jordan, Alice Malivert, Christoph Schuster, Charles W. Melnyk, Weibing Yang, Colin Turnbull, Elliot M. Meyerowitz, James C. W. Locke, and Henrik Jönsson. PNAS 2018 ; published ahead of print January 23, 2018, doi:10.1073/pnas.1718670115

This research was undertaken through a collaboration between the Jönsson, Locke and Meyerowitz research groups at the Sainsbury Laboratory, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge.

Article by Kathy Grube, Communications Manager, Sainsbury Laboratory.

̽��ֱ��molecular mechanisms enabling plants to quickly adapt their rate of flower production in response to changing nutrient levels in soil have been revealed by researchers at the Sainsbury Laboratory.

This knowledge could be utilised to select for plants with higher seed yields

Benoit Landrein

Plant meristems

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Predictive modelling of plant growth for food and fuel

lw355 — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 10:13:24 +0000

A search for answers to the mysteries of plant development lies at the heart of research at the Sainsbury Laboratory, a newly opened institute that was made possible by an £82 million grant from the Gatsby Charitable Foundation. In due course, the Laboratory will house 120 research scientists focused on the multifaceted events that unfold from the moment a single plant egg cell is fertilised.

Understanding plant development is both a fascinating and vitally important intellectual challenge, as Professor Elliot Meyerowitz, the Laboratory’s inaugural Director, explained: “ ̽��ֱ��answers will not only enhance our fundamental understanding of life, they will also have important application to a critical problem that faces the world today – how to feed and fuel a growing population with limited resources of land, water and energy.”

Scientists know some of the structures involved in how a plant develops – the machinery for processing DNA information and the basis of cellular behaviour, for instance. Less is known about the complex communication network that exists across the plant as a whole. ̽��ֱ��movement of small molecules between cells effectively enables plant cells to ‘talk to each other’ during development and to react to their environment.

“Our work aims to understand how plants ‘read-in’ their environment and ‘read-out’ this information as particular patterns of growth and development,” said Professor Meyerowitz.

Take, for example, branching in plants: how does a plant know where and when to form a branch from its stem, and why does pruning make a plant bushier? Professor Ottoline Leyser, Associate Director of the Sainsbury Laboratory, discovered a hormone network that governs the process. Moving over long distances in the plant, the hormones provide a rich source of information that is then locally interpreted to regulate branching.

“It is this complex web of interaction that makes living organisms more than the sum of their parts,” added Professor Meyerowitz. “Even a small plant can have 10 million cells communicating in a whole variety of different modalities, chemical and physical. There may be 50 different types of plant cells, and each cell might have 30,000 different proteins that might associate and dissociate at millisecond scales, or even less.”

Professor Meyerowitz likens the approach the scientists will be taking to the computer-aided design process used for the Boeing 777 commercial aeroplane: “We’re not designing a plant – it’s already there – but we’re learning how it’s put together. We know what sort of data we want, and we know how to turn it into knowledge using computational models.”

Computational modelling and mathematical and engineering-based approaches will therefore feature strongly alongside expertise in genetics, cell biology, physiology and evolutionary biology within the Laboratory.

Predictive modelling

Professor Meyerowitz studies the genetics of flowering plants, especially the small laboratory plant Arabidopsis thaliana. His team was the first to identify and clone several flower development genes. Two decades ago, they pioneered the re-engineering of flower design, replacing the flowering organs with other organs – a potential 625 possible types of flowers. ̽��ֱ��scientists can already model many aspects of plant development and then test if the hypotheses about plant behaviour are correct. ̽��ֱ��future research of the Sainsbury Laboratory will be channelled into such models, with ever-increasing complexity. And, by elucidating the intricacies of plant development, the research will facilitate re-designing crops of the future.

“We’re aimed at 10 or 20, or even 50, years from now so that people can exploit the basic knowledge that we’ve generated, the way the basic knowledge of 30 years ago is being exploited now,” added Professor Meyerowitz. “We’re pretty sure we can figure out how plants develop. It’s not a dream.”

For more information, please contact Professor Elliot Meyerowitz (emm66@cam.ac.uk) at the Sainsbury Laboratory.

Fundamental research on plant development at the Sainsbury Laboratory will help in the future design of optimal crops.

Our work aims to understand how plants ‘read-in’ their environment and ‘read-out’ this information as particular patterns of growth and development

Professor Elliot Meyerowitz

Marcus Heisler

Live imaging of the growing tips of plants

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New Hall to achieve Cambridge first at Chelsea Flower Show

tdk25 — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0000

For what is believed to be the first time in the event’s 155-year history, a Cambridge college will be contributing a garden to this year’s Chelsea Flower Show.

New Hall, a women's college at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, will create a Chic Garden entitled ̽��ֱ��Transit Of Venus. Inspired by the college's buildings, collections and the achievements of its members, the garden will be designed and created from start to finish by a team of alumnae, including the designer, Sue Goss, under the guidance of Head Gardener, Jo Cobb.

̽��ֱ��transit of Venus, when Venus passes between the Sun and the Earth, is a potent moment in the history of science, which inspired Captain Cook's Endeavour voyage. ̽��ֱ��chic garden will celebrate New Hall's lively spirit of scientific enquiry and its association with several eminent alumnae astronomers, including Professor Jocelyn Bell Burnell, who discovered pulsars during her time as a postgraduate student at New Hall.

̽��ֱ��elliptical path Venus takes during its transit will be represented by a curved wall weaving through the centre of the garden. Three mirrored panels will also be installed to reveal reflections, silhouettes and shadows and give visitors the sense that they are viewing the transit from different positions on Earth as they walk past.

Two globes will also represent the planets passing through time. A glass sphere at the back of the garden will symbolise a planet still with its protective atmosphere, like Earth, while a parched Venus will be signified by a second globe at the front. This second transition, from a lush, green planet to one that has become parched and barren has a further connection with New Hall, whose annual Environment on the Edge lecture series examines our relationship with the natural world and what tomorrow might bring.

"Over recent years the gardens at New Hall have gained a reputation for being some of the most colourful and lively in the ̽��ֱ��," Anne Lonsdale, President of New Hall, said. "This, combined with the outstanding expertise of our alumnae, makes this an exciting but attainable project for the College."

̽��ֱ��Chelsea garden will also be packed with other symbolism special to the college. ̽��ֱ��variety of colourful flowers will aim to reflect the diverse range of the College's collection of contemporary art by women. New Hall's Grade II* listed modernist architecture has meanwhile helped to inspire the garden's curving, white walls.

Once the Show is over, many features of the New Hall garden will return to the college to create a new garden in commemoration of its founding President, Dame Rosemary Murray.

̽��ֱ��team of alumnae planning the garden includes Sue Goss, a garden designer and lecturer, who has won several awards at Chelsea, including a Gold, two Silver-Gilts, Best Courtyard Garden and BBC People's Award. Ursula Buchan, award-winning gardening journalist and author, has provided the planting plan, while Cambridge-based architect Anne Cooper is helping with researching, sourcing and detailing the materials for the construction. ̽��ֱ��team also includes Kate Gadsby, a gardens photographer whose calendar of images from the New Hall gardens has helped to fund the project.

For what is believed to be the first time in the event’s 155-year history, a Cambridge college will be contributing a garden to this year’s Chelsea Flower Show.

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