Marchantia Ontogeny
Ontogeny: the development of an individual organism or anatomical or behavioural feature from the earliest stage to maturity.
To exploit Marchantia as a multicellular model system for basic research and engineering approaches, we need a reference atlas of cell and tissue types throughout gemma development in order to a) track physiological and morphogenetic changes, and b) engineer gene expression in specific cell types and dissect cell autonomy.
Summary of cell and tissue types in Marchantia gemma
Approaches to map cell and tissue types by identifying distinct expression patterns
Enhancer trap screening
Transcription Factors Proximal Promoters Screening
Reverse approach to find genes controlling morphogenesis
Morphogenesis is one of the major outstanding problems in the biological sciences. It concerns the fundamental question of how biological form and structure are generated. Throughout biology our understanding of how multicellular organisms self-organise in specific shapes and sizes, is very limited.
By finding mutants with altered cell and tissue types, we can investigate on the mechanisms operating at the cellular and tissue levels.