Francois🌼Parcy 🟦 Profile picture
Plant Biologist @CNRS: 🌼 Plant Development Gene Regulation Evolution + 🧗‍♂️🚴‍♂️🏔️⛷️ 📕L'histoire secrète des fleurs 📗Les clés du champ @humenSciences

Jul 9, 2021, 11 tweets

How did domestication transform inflorescences into fractals ? @ScienceMagazine
🥦⬇️
science.sciencemag.org/content/373/65…

☑️Edible cauliflowers arose from domestication of Brassica oleracea over centuries
☑️However cauliflowers also form in the Arabidopsis ap1 cal double mutant
[Bowman_Development_93, Kempin_Science_95, Ferrandiz_Developpement_00 and more…]

☑️Existing knowledge + new data ➡️we built a functional gene regulatory network capturing meristem fates in both WT and cauliflower mutant + a 3D plant model with each meristem fate driven by its own GRN

Here is the virtual wild-type plant growing

Cauliflowers form because floral meristems fail to complete their development but keep traces of transient floral state: exposure to the floral regulator LEAFY represses leaves (known) and releases the growth inhibition of high-order meristems (new❗️)

Edible cauliflowers have many more mutations (Guo_BMC-Biol_2021)
☑️BoAP1 genes are active but their expression very much delayed (eventually cauliflowers flower)
☑️Very high-order meristems grow (>7)
☑️Curds are unique and compact

Why is Romanesco so fractal ?
We built on the shoulders of Kieffer_Planta_98
Cauliflower is as fractal but conical curd shape makes it more visible in Romanesco

Conical shape arises from increasing meristem production rate (likely due to increasing meristem size
To test this hypothesis, we tried to make a romanesco in Arabidopsis
"Not quite romanesco but already a bit romanesc'" as @simonrdg said

Long and friendly team work with Christophe Godin, @EugenioAzpeitia, Gabrielle Tichtinsky, MarieLeMasson, JéremyLucas @pacomadu2, @etienne_farcot, @Serranomislata, @CARGIALTECH, @Nat_Prunet
, @veronicagregis, Desmond Bradley, Martin Kater. thanks to all 🙏

Making-off

@threader_app
compile

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