Date: 8th October 2025
Time: 13:00
Title: Architecture of Shoot Vasculature: Coordination of Organogenesis and Vascular Development in Arabidopsis
Location: Lecture room 228, Lab building, Koetilantie 5 and online via Zoom
Host: Paula Elomaa
Abstract: The vascular system in plant shoots forms a complex 3D network of interconnected strands that extend along the stem and branch toward lateral organs such as leaves and flowers. This system supplies water and nutrients, and enables long-distance communication within the plant, making its architecture crucial for plant functioning.
As plants continuously generate new organs throughout their lifetime, the vascular network undergoes dynamic expansion, tightly coordinated with the formation of lateral organs and their spatial arrangement (phyllotaxis) at the shoot apical meristem. Despite extensive studies on the molecular mechanisms of vascular patterning and differentiation, it remains unclear how vascular development is integrated with organogenetic processes at the meristem.
In this talk, I will discuss past and current hypotheses on the relationship between organogenesis and vascular development. In this context, I will present our recent study, in which we used Arabidopsis as a model system and high-resolution imaging with laser confocal microscopy to reconstruct the vascular system in 3D and analyze the molecular events associated with leaf initiation. Based on these data, we constructed a computational model of vascular development that captures its self-organizing properties and successfully reproduces the vascular patterns observed in planta.
Agata is an associate professor at the University of Silesia in Katowice, Poland. Her research focuses on morphogenetic processes at the shoot apical meristem in model plant species. Specifically, she investigates how biomechanical and biochemical (hormone-related) factors regulate cellular processes that underlie the meristem’s major functions: self-maintenance and organ formation.