Plant Vascular Development - A. Rodriguez-Villalon

Our research program focuses primarily on the plasticity of plant development in response to environmental cues. To adapt to their surroundings, plant cells need to be able to modify their cell fate and morphogenesis in response to both external and internal stimuli. An example of this plasticity is the variable formation of mature vascular cells. To become functional conductive elements, xylem and phloem cells undergo two drastic, albeit different, morphogenetic developmental programs which include the reinforcement of cell walls and partial or total cell clearance. Vascular cells rely on their endomembrane system to spatio-temporally regulate their dynamic differentiation. Over the last years, we have shown that the interference with the correct functionality of cell trafficking in turn alters vascular identity, demonstrating how the endomembrane system impinges on the developmental trajectory of plant cells. Moreover, the differentiation of each vascular cell depends on the combinatorial integration of intrinsic and external signals, which needs to be coordinated at the multicellular level to preserve the functionality of the tissue.

By generating a multidisciplinary approached that combined cell biology, developmental and physiological approaches, we characterized how phosphoinositides contributed to the regulation of the differentiation program of phloem and xylem cells.

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Publications

All publications can be found in external pagePubMed.