MPIDS Colloquium: Dynamics and self-organization in the movement of plants and axons: A unified theory of tropism and taxis

MPIDS Colloquium

  • Datum: 24.02.2021
  • Uhrzeit: 14:15 - 15:15
  • Vortragende(r): Prof. Dr. Alain Goriely
  • University of Oxford, United Kingdom
  • Ort: Max-Planck-Institut für Dynamik und Selbstorganisation (MPIDS)
  • Raum: Video conference at www.zoom.us Meeting ID: 959 2774 3389 Passcode: 651129
  • Gastgeber: MPIDS / LMP
  • Kontakt: ramin.golestanian@ds.mpg.de
To survive and to thrive, plants rely on their ability to sense multiple environmental signals, such as gravity or light, and respond to them by growing in a particular direction and changing their shape. Similarly, many cells respond to the stimuli generated by their environment to survive and achieve certain functions. This directed response, called tropism in plants and taxis in animals, relies on similar mechanisms.
In these systems, a stimulus must be transduced down to the cellular level to create the physical deformations leading to shape changes. I will present a mathematical theory of tropism and taxis based on the general theory of morphoelasticity and dimensional reduction for living matter. In this theory, a system integrate multiple stimuli and respond by tissue-level growth and remodelling, thus modifying the organ shape and position with respect to the stimuli. This feedback loop is a paradigm of dynamics and self-organization. The shape is dynamically updated in response to individual stimuli or produce complex behaviours generated by multiple stimuli such as canopy escape or pole wrapping for climbing plants and target guidance for axons the in the developing nervous system.
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