Research Projects

Vascular regeneration studies in plants were pioneered by Jacobs and Sachs as early as1952, but the area remained less investigated thereafter, especially with respect to growing lateral organs such as leaves.For decades, it was believed that leaves growing in a normal developmental context cannot repair the local injuries caused by biotic and abiotic factors, until our recent finding proved other-wise(Radhakrishnan et al., 2020).It is the first study ever to demonstrate the leaf’s regenerative ability and to discover the mechanism underlying polarized growth of regenerating vein in growing leaves.Although veins are of utmost physiological relevance for plant’s survival, the cellular and molecular basis of the recognition and communication between the physically disconnected vascular strands which enables its reunion, hitherto remains unknown.While probing the regulation of fundamental cellular behavior during vein regeneration, we intent to fathom the coordination between stem cell activation, cell division and trans-differentiation, and how it guides the reunion of disconnected vein.The proposed study aims to dissect the fundamental principles of this coordinated interaction, a phenomenon previously unknown in plants.The premise of the proposal is to establish a link between stress signaling, cell division, stem cell activation and trans-differentiation, and to provide a deeper insight into how their coordinated interaction guides the regeneration of highly polarized vein.