Event Details

MARS (Mathematics for AI in Real-world Systems) seminar series. Speaker: Sander Hille (Leiden). Title: Multi-scale model-based investigation into the molecular processes that drive long-range auxin transport in Arabidopsis plants

Abstract: Auxin is an important plant hormone in the regulation of plant growth and evelopment, among others. It is transported from the top of the plant to the roots. Various proteins have been shown experimentally to be involved as local transporters over cell membranes inside the stem of the plant in this long-range transport. We shall discuss how multi-scale mathematical modelling and analysis was used in combination with well-tuned experimental workin the Plant BioDynamics Lab at the Leiden University to gain novel biological insights into the course that auxin takes inside the stem during this transport. Due to its small molecular size, auxin cannot be made visible by fluorescent protein tagging, for example. The model however enables to bridge the scales from macroscopic plant-level transport measurements to microscopic membrane-transport processes. We discuss and motivate how this was implemented, given a realistic setting with its particular experimental limitations. Screening of the long-range auxin transport data of various mutant plants in view of this model then suggested a different role for various transporter proteins than previously anticipated.