From weeds to wormholes

Enrico Coen, John Innes Centre, Norwich

Much progress has been made recently in our understanding of how genes control patterns of cell types or regional identities with in an organism during its development. However, the link between this process of patterning and growth or morphogenesis is much less well understood. Bridging this gap requires a quantitative understanding of how genes modify growth of multicellular tissues in 3D space. We have been addressing this problem using a combination of genetic, morphological, computational and imaging approaches in collaboration with the laboratories of Przemyslaw Prusinkiewicz (Calgary) and Andrew Bangham (Norwich). The results provide new insights into how genes interact with patterns of growth to modify plant architecture and organ shape. The talk will illustrate how integrating biological and computational methods may lead to a quantitative mechanistic framework for development.

Vincent Moulton
© 2005, CBL
Computational Biology Laboratory,
School of Computing Sciences,
University of East Anglia,
Norwich, NR4 7TJ, UK.