Plant and Microbial Biology Plant Seminar: "Actin and microtubule crosstalk impact cell patterning and development"

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Wednesday, February 22, 2017

Molecular Mechanisms Behind Plant Cell Growth

How cells grow, one of the most fundamental aspects of biology, remains an open question. My research program focuses on plant cells, which unlike many other eukaryotic cells are not motile. Confined by a relatively rigid cell wall, plant cells take a wide variety of shapes within tissues of the entire plant and ultimately these shapes dictate organismal patterning. Key to plant development is the underlying architecture of individual cells, which at the molecular level is controlled by proteins of the cytoskeleton. The plant cytoskeleton consists of two filamentous networks, microtubules and actin, and their associated proteins.