Coordinator

• Pierre Hilson; Flanders Institute for Biotechnology, Gent, Belgium.

Partners

• Pierre Hilson, Dirk Inzé, Geert De Jaeger, Gerrit Beemster, Martin Kuiper; Flanders Institute for Biotechnology, Gent, Belgium.
• Herman Höfte, Christian Meyer, Jean-Denis Faure, Olivier Loudet; Institut Jean-Pierre Bourgin, Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique, Versailles, France.
• Vicky Buchanan-Wollaston, Jim Beynon, David Rand; Warwick Systems Biology Centre, Coventry, UK.
• Lothar Willmitzer, Mark Stitt, Thomas Altmann; Max Planck Institute for Molecular Plant Physiology, Potsdam-Golm, Germany.
• Christine Granier, François Tardieu, Thierry Simonneau; Laboratoire d’Ècophysiologie des Plantes sous Stress Environnementaux, Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique, Montpellier, France.
• José Luis Micol, María Rosa Ponce; Universidad Miguel Hernández, Elche, Spain.
• Claire Lurin, Sébastien Aubourg; Unité de Recherche en Génomique Végétale, Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique, France.
• John Doonan, Michael Bevan; John Innes Centre, Norwich, UK.
• Johan Geysen, Kris Ver Donck, Marc Moeremans; Maia Scientific, Gheel, Belgium.
• Gerco Angenent; Plant Research International, Wageningen, The Netherlands.
• Wilhelm Gruissem; Laboratory of Plant Biotechnology, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich, Switzerland.
• Detlef Weigel; Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology, Tübingen, Germany.
• George Coupland; Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research, Köln, Germany.
• Sean May; Nottingham Arabidopsis Stock Centre, Nottingham, UK.

Arabidopsis GROwth Network integrating OMICS technologies (AGRON-OMICS)

Plants are crucial to mankind as they supply food, chemicals, pharmaceuticals and renewable sources of materials and energy. Yet the processes by which they grow are poorly understood. Although some of the key factors involved in plant organ growth have already been identified, the circuitry that links the different levels of organisation (whole plant, organ, cell, molecular module, molecule) remains to be uncovered. Fortunately, for the first time, techniques exist or can be developed to characterise a multicellular system exhaustively at all relevant levels. The main goals of AGRON-OMICS are (1) to survey systematically with an array of high throughput methods what are the molecular components driving growth in the cells of a developing Arabidopsis leaf, (2) to understand how these elements interact and coordinate their action across levels of organisation, and (3) to explain quantitative growth phenotypes at the molecular level through inference and mathematical MODELLING, followed by further experimentation. The partnership tackling these ambitious goals has two poles: BIOLOGY, the laboratories involved study the main known molecular pathways that regulate and implement leaf growth, including cell cycle, cell wall biosynthesis and remodelling, carbon and nitrogen metabolism, and photosynthesis, TECHNOLOGY, each of them offers a unique platform chosen to record variables describing Arabidopsis plant and growth, from the macroscopic analysis of leaf size and shape, to the in depth analysis of molecular cell components. AGRON-OMICS will establish the infrastructure necessary to organise its multidisciplinary research programme, then to integrate and interpret a wide range of data sets. With a strong emphasis on DISSEMINATION, the project will create knowledge used in industrial applications and will yield data, tools, resources and novel technologies that will be released to the research community at large as soon as practically feasible.