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Modeling hormonal control of cambium proliferation
Vladyslav Oles1, Alexander Panchenko1, Andrei Smertenko2
1Department of Mathematics, Washington State University, Pullman, Washington, United States of America.
Plos One
|February 11, 2017
Summary
Breeding trees for higher wood yield can mitigate climate change. A new model, CARENET, simulates cambium regulation, revealing hormonal interactions that control wood production and offering insights for tree breeding programs.
Area of Science:
- Plant Biology
- Computational Biology
- Climate Change Mitigation
Background:
- Atmospheric CO2 rise drives global warming; increased CO2 sequestration by trees is crucial.
- Trees store sequestered CO2 as wood biomass, making wood yield a target for climate change mitigation and renewable resource production.
- Cambium, a stem cell niche, produces xylem cells for wood formation, but its regulation is poorly understood, hindering tree breeding efforts.
Purpose of the Study:
- To develop a computational model for understanding cambium regulation and its role in wood production.
- To identify key factors and pathways controlling cambium proliferation for potential application in tree breeding.
- To address the limitations in experimental tools for studying cambium biology.
Main Methods:
- Construction of a Boolean network model named CARENET (CAmbium REgulation gene NETwork).
- Inclusion of key transcription factors (WOX4, HD-ZIP III) and their regulators in the model.
- Simulations to predict the effects of hormonal pathways on cambium activity.
Main Results:
- Hormones like auxin, cytokinin, gibberellin, and brassinosteroids cooperatively promote WOX4 and HD-ZIP III transcription.
- Auxin and cytokinin pathways exhibit negative feedback regulation on each other.
- Hormonal pathways demonstrate redundancy in maintaining cambium activity, and individual cambium cells display molecular diversity.
Conclusions:
- The CARENET model provides a framework for understanding cambium regulation and its response to hormonal signals.
- The findings highlight the complex interplay of hormones in controlling wood formation.
- CARENET can be extended for integrated modeling of differentiation pathways, facilitating the breeding of trees with enhanced wood yield for climate change mitigation.
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