Dr Jill Harrison
Find out more about Jill Harrison and her Group
Project Title: Combining Conservation of stem cell function in land plants
Supervisor: Dr Jill Harrison
Project outline:
Current understanding of stem cell function in plants comes from studies multicellular angiosperm shoot meristems. Unlike angiosperms, extant relatives of the earliest land plants have just one or two clearly identifiable stem cells in their meristems. Recent work (Harrison et al. 2009) suggests that fate may be specified in daughters of these cells in a manner analogous to the animal stem cell niche. The aim of this research is to determine the basis of stem versus non-stem cell fate in two early land plant lineages, and the degree of conservation in stem cell function between plants and animals.
These aims will be addressed by perturbing stem cell function physically in live imaging experiments, and genetically by identifying and deleting homologues of known markers for stem cell fate in flowering plants. Novel markers of cell fate in plants will be identified using an enhancer trap screen and transriptomic approaches.
This work will identify a consensus in stem cell function in plants and between plants and animals, revealing fundamental aspects of stem cell biology, and will feed into a broader project to look at the early evolution of land plant body plans.
See Research