The research group of Professor Takeshi Miura and Assistant Professor Toshiko Imamura of the Graduate School of Medicine, Kyushu University has collaborated with the University of Tokyo and L-Pixel Co., Ltd. to elucidate the mechanism by which the complex shapes of the epidermal cells of plants are formed for the first time in the world. Announced that it was done.
The cells on the leaf surface of dicotyledonous plants form a jigsaw puzzle-like structure.Many genes involved in this phenomenon have been identified, but the mechanism by which these interactions form a shape remains largely unknown.Professor Miura et al. Started joint research based on the study of the mechanism by which the suture line of the skull bends, thinking that there is something in common with the mechanism of pattern formation in the cell wall of plants.
The research group mathematically modeled the molecular circuit of synthesis-decomposition of the cell wall of plants, and reproduced the curvature formation of the cell wall by numerical simulation.This model was found to be exactly the same as the skull suture curvature formation model previously used by the Kyushu University group.
In response to this, an experimental group of botanists at the University of Tokyo conducted an experiment to promote the decomposition of the cell wall and observe the shape change, and verified the result with a mathematical model to keep the cell wall at a certain thickness. We have elucidated a part of the mechanism that forms a curved structure.In addition, we predicted that the angle of the three-pronged part of the cell wall at the joint of cells would approach 120 degrees with a mathematical model, and confirmed it by verification using image processing technology.
In this way, through "super" interdisciplinary research in which mathematics mediates between medicine and botany, we have elucidated the mechanism of plant cell shaping that was completely unknown until now.It is expected that the mathematical model obtained in this research will lead to the development of a field of plant research, which is the elucidation of the mechanism of cell wall curvature.
