Section: Research Program

Meristem functioning and development

In this second scientific axis, we develop models of meristem growth at tissue level in order to integrate various sources of knowledge and to analyze their dynamic and complex spatial interaction. To carry out this integration, we need to develop a complete methodological approach containing:

• algorithms for the automatized segmentation in 3D, and cell lineage tracking throughout time, for images coming from confocal microscopy,

• design of high-level routines and user interfaces to distribute these image analysis tools to the scientific community,

• tools for structural and statistical analysis of 3D meristem structure (spatial statistics, multiscale geometric and topological analysis),

• physical models of cells interactions based on spring-mass systems or on tensorial mechanics at the level of cells,

• models of biochemical networks of hormonal and gene driven regulation, at the cellular and tissue level, using continuous and discrete formalisms,

• and models of cell development taking into account the effects of growth and cell divisions on the two previous classes of models.