Project properties
Title Root hair growth as a model system to understand plant cell growth
Group Plant Cell Biology, Laboratory of
Project type thesis
Credits 16
Supervisor(s) Tijs Ketelaar, Bela Mulder, and Norbert de Ruijter
Examiner(s) Prof. Dr. Marcel Janson
Contact info tijs.ketelaar@wur.nl
0317-482453
Begin date 2008/04/01
End date 2010/04/01
Description We are interested in the process of plant cell growth and its control. Plant cell growth is a process that takes place at the cell surface. Since tip-growing cells grow rapidly and at one side only, the principles of the growth machinery of plant cells is best studied in cells like root hairs and pollen tubes, which expand by tip growth. A further advantage of these cells is that they are easily accessible for signal molecules, drugs, fixatives, microinjection, imaging and manipulation.

For making an explanatory and predictive mathematical model of tip growth, we need to know where exactly this expansion takes place. Is it at the extreme tip, or in the whole hemisphere of the tip, or, maybe only at the sides of the hemisphere?

This problem can be experimentally studied by applying fluorescent beads onto the tip of growing hairs and follow them in the confocal laser scanning microscope during cell elongation. An important part of the project is the analysis of the microscopy data. The data will be used in the mathematical model for cell tip growth which we are working on and will contribute to a better understanding of cell expansion of tip growing cells and of plants in general.
Used skills Culturing Arabidopsis and/or Medicago roots between glass slides; applying beads on root hairs in the microscope; confocal laser scanning microscopy; digital analysis of microscopic data
Requirements PCB-30306