Morphogenesis in plants: modeling the shoot apical meristem, andpossible applications

摘要

A key determinant of overall morphogenesis in flowering plantssuch as Arabidopsis thaliana is the shoot apical meristem (growing tipof a shoot). Gene regulation networks can be used to model this system.We exhibit a very preliminary two-dimensional model including generegulation and intercellular signaling, but omitting cell division anddynamical geometry. The model can be trained to have three stableregions of gene expression corresponding to the central zone, peripheralzone, and rib meristem. We also discuss a space-engineering motivationfor studying and controlling the morphogenesis of plants using suchcomputational models