Section: Partnerships and Cooperations

International Bilateral Relations

ANR-BBSRC Grant

Participants : Christophe Godin, Jan Traas, Etienne Farcot, Yassin Refahi, Frédéric Boudon, Andrew Bangham [Univ. East Anglia] , Enrico Coen [John Innes Center, UK] , Robert Sablowski [John Innes Center, UK] , François Parcy [CNRS] .

(Contractor for Virtual Plants: INRIA. From September 2008 to September 2011)

Flower Model: Modeling growth and gene regulation in floral organs is a project funded by the ANR-BBSRC programme System Biology (SysBio). Systems biology aims to explain and predict the behavior of complex biological systems by quantitative analysis and modeling of the interactions between all the relevant components. An important challenge for the years to come is how to integrate the approaches used for growth analysis at different stages with the role of regulatory genes to produce predictive models of floral organ growth and patterning. To address this question, this project brings together leading UK and French teams with complementary expertises on imaging, floral development and quantitative modeling, to focus on a comparative analysis of sepal and petal growth in Arabidopsis thaliana. We use live imaging and sector analysis to produce quantitative models of growth for these organs. We then integrate information on regulatory genes with spatial information to produce in silico models of the regulatory network controlling sepal and petal development. The results of the project consist of:

• Capturing quantitative data on sepal and petal morphogenesis

• Analyzing and model the regulatory networks underlying sepal and petal development

• Linking morphogenesis to regulatory networks

• Creating an integrated database of complex datasets

ERASysBio+ iSAM

Participants : Christophe Godin, Etienne Farcot, Jan Traas, Teva Vernoux, James A.H. Murray [Univ. Cardiff, UK] , Yrjö Helariutta [Univ. Helsinki, Finland] .

(Contractor for Virtual Plants: INRIA. From September 2008 to September 2011)

This project essentially aims at improving our knowledge of shoot apical meristem, and more specifically the combined action of auxin and cytokinin, using a systems biology approach. It is part of a wider program, the ERASysBio initiative, a consortium of European funding bodies, ministries and project management agencies. The purpose of this consortium is to develop fundamental and strategic collaboration in the funding of systems approaches to biological research. The iSAM project is one of the 16 transnational consortia that have been selected out of 51 proposals; in total they comprise 85 working groups from 14 countries. Four partners are involved in iSAM: the group of J. Murray will focus on mutants of cell cycle regulation, the group of Y. Helariutta is specialized in several aspects of cytokinin regulation, while the group of J. Traas in Lyon provides input regarding auxin regulation and transport, and Virtual Plants is in charge of the modeling aspects, in synergy with the three other groups.

More information on the project can be found at http://www.erasysbio.net/index.php?index=277 .

Other bilateral relations

There is currently an active connection with the group of Malcolm Bennett, at the Centre for Plant Integrative Biology (CPIB) in Nottingham. The CPIB invests in the development of OpenAlea at the tissue level. In this context, both groups have regular meetings and visio conference to progress jointly on the definition of the platform. In particular, C. Godin, M. Walker and E. Farcot went to a 1-week meeting on tissue data-structure definition and several researchers from CPIB came to Montpellier to continue this work and start implementation.

The team of Pr. Prusinkiewicz at the University of Calgary (Canada) is an associated team of Virtual Plants. In this context, F. Boudon spent 5 weeks in Calgary, and Wojtek Palubicki, PhD student, came for a 3 months visits to work on plant architecture simulation models.

Yann Guédon is working with Claudia Negron (PhD student), Anna Davidson (PhD student), David Da Silva (post-doctoral fellow) and Ted DeJong (University of California, Davis) on the analysis of the development and the branching and axillary flowering structures of peach and almond shoots. Claudia Negron, Anna Davidson, David Da Silva and Ted DeJong visited the Virtual Plants and the AFEF teams (Evelyne Costes) in September 2011.