HYDROSTEM · Uncovering turgor sensing in the Arabidopsis cambium.
Horizon Europe — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2024-05-01 → 2026-04-30
- EU contribution
- €199,694
- Participants
- 1
- Scheme
- HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
Uncovering turgor sensing in the Arabidopsis cambium.
Plant growth is fundamentally constrained by water availability, and increasing climate variability is intensifying the frequency and severity of drought events worldwide. This creates an urgent need to understand how plants sense and integrate hydraulic signals to adjust growth in a dynamic environment. While major advances have been made in characterizing molecular responses to water stress, the mechanisms by which plant meristems—stem cell niches that drive organ growth—perceive hydraulic fluctuations and translate them into growth decisions remain poorly understood. This knowledge gap is particularly relevant for the vascular cambium, the largest plant meristem, which controls radial growth and biomass accumulation in shoots and roots and is central to wood formation and long-term carbon storage. The overarching objective of this project is to elucidate how water status is sensed at the cellular level in the cambium and how this information is converted into changes in cell proliferation and tissue differentiation. Specifically, the project aims to (i) generate spatial and temporal maps of cambial growth rate and cell fate under varying water conditions, (ii) identify osmosensing and mechanosensing ion channels that regulate cambial activity, and (iii) uncover molecular regulators whose expression is transcriptionally responsive to water status. By integrating lineage tracing, genome editing, and quantitative tissue analysis, the project establishes a mechanistic framework linking hydraulic cues to meristem behavior.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
Plant meristems integrate signals from water conditions to tune their proliferative activity and control growth. While extensive progress has been made elucidating water stress responses in plants, how cells in aerial meristems sense hydraulic fluctuations remains largely unknown. The vascular cambium (VC), the largest plant meristem, contributes to the radial growth of shoots and roots by producing xylem and phloem tissue. Theoretical models for cambial growth predict that water-dependent turgor pressure stimulates (locally) the proliferative activity in this meristem. These models are extensively supported by correlative studies in greenhouse and field conditions, yet how turgor pressure is sensed and transduced into a cell proliferation response is still unknown. This is what I would like to investigate during my postdoc at the Mähönen group. To do so, I will be trained in the design and implementation of the latest lineage tracing and genome editing tools from the hosting lab. I will contribute with my background in meristem hydraulics to reveal the dynamics of cambial cells under water deficit. Since the VC is directly connected with water-transporting cells, hydraulic fluctuations can have a direct physical effect in cambial cells, more specifically at the plasma membrane where key osmosensors are localized. Therefore, I will study the function of osmosensing channels in the context of cambial developmental plasticity. Finally, I will identify regulators of cambial activity dependent on water status. This project aims at 1) Generating a growth rate and cell fate map for the cambium under variations of water status, 2) Identifying osmosensing channels involved in the control of cambial activity, and 3) Uncovering cambial molecular factors transcriptionally sensitive to water status. Taken together, this project will provide me with a material and conceptual platform for developing a career studying the hydraulic control of plant growth.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- HELSINGIN YLIOPISTO · HelsinkiCoordinatorFinland
Links
- View on CORDIS
- DOI: 10.3030/101150831
- https://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/documents/downloadPublic?documentIds=080166e51b8b4aea&appId=PPGMS
Data: CORDIS, © European Union