Proposed Symposium Title: MECHANICAL FORCES IN PLANT GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT
Abstract: Mechanical forces play a key role in plant growth and development at various levels. They act within and among plant organs that can mold their shape, structure, and function. This topic has received relatively little attention before the early 2010s, although several classical studies of plant morphology, in particular, many studies on floral development, have suggested the importance of mechanical forces in plant growth and development. Nevertheless, recent advances in plant molecular biology and biophysics enable us to re-evaluate the importance of mechanical forces in plant growth and development and to combine the results of these two disciplines with those of classical studies of plant morphology. In this symposium we aim to thematize the key role of mechanical forces in plant growth and development from three different disciplines: plant morphology, plant molecular biology, and biophysics.
The focus will be set on the three following topics in concrete terms: the effects of mechanical forces on floral development, the cellular and molecular mechanism of forces acting during plant development and their effects on the structure, and the biophysics behind plant growth and development. These topics will provide a broad, yet diverse but complementary insight into the mechanical forces in plant growth and development.
Speaker 1: Name: Louis Ronse De Craene
Institutional affiliation: Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh
Address: 20A Inverleith Row, Edinburgh, EH3 5LR, Scotland, UK.
Email: LRonsedeCraene@rbge.org.uk
Tentative Talk Title: How mechanical forces affect heterochrony as a major force of floral evolution
Speaker 2: Name: Olivier Hamant
Institutional affiliation: RDP-INRAE, CNRS, UCBL1,ENS de Lyon
Address: 46 allée d'Italie, Lyon Cedex 07, FR
Email: olivier.hamant@ens-lyon.fr
Tentative Talk Title: How transcriptional noise and mechanical conflicts contribute to organ shape reproducibility
Speaker 3: Name: Dorota Kwiatkowska
Institutional Affiliation: Institute of Biology, Biotechnology and Environmental Protection, University of Silesia
Address: 40-032 Katowice, Jagiellonska 28, Poland
E-mail: dorota.kwiatkowska@us.edu.pl
Tentative Talk Title: How cell wall structure and mechanics affect plant organ function.
Topics (Up to three): Development and Structure
Topic 2: Physiology
Topic 3: Botanical History
Justification: The interest in the topic of mechanical forces in plant development and growth has increased during the last decade, in particular, due to the recent advances in plant molecular biology and biophysics. The cumulated knowledge about this topic calls for examining its general relevance for plant morphology. We are sure that many IBC participants should feel interested in attending this symposium as it will summarize, from three different disciplines, the state of the art of study of the role of mechanical forces in plant growth and development and provide insight into further studies on this attractive topic.
