CD BioSciences works to help clients build the mechanical models required for a wide range of mechanobiological studies. The integrated models we build that combine structural mechanics with mechanosensory biology is helpful to understand the distribution of mechanical loads within plants and provide important information for studying the mechanical growth response of plants.

Background

During growth and development, land plants encounter complex mechanical challenges from external and internal sources, in particular from winds and turgor pressure. Plants must respond to a wide range of signals in order to adapt their development to the prevailing environmental conditions. Mechanical sensing and subsequent responses are therefore particularly important for the survival of plants under mechanical stress conditions due to their sessile nature.

Mechanical sensing and mechanical response have been studied for a long time. Discovering how mechanosensing cells can signal to meristematic cells is key to making progress in analyzing the mechanobiological effects of plant shape, plant size, tissue distribution, or stimulus amplitude. With the development of systems mechanics, a variety of biophysical models have been developed that make it possible to address this question. These models help to compare loads and responses between experiments and provide a promising tool for quantitatively testing the biologic hypotheses that describe the mechanotransduction networks.

Fig.1 Mechanosensing of internal loads in the SAM and microtubule re-orientation. (Moulia, 2015)

Our Services

The mechanical growth response of plants is difficult to study due to the multiple organizational levels and scales involved and a large number of interactions. We are committed to building and analyzing sound mechanical models to help our customers meet this challenge. We combine systems biology modeling with experimentation to provide insights into the mechanosensitive control of growth. In addition, we adopt mechanical models to the different needs of our clients' research projects, such as different experimental setups or natural conditions. The modeling services we offer include but are not limited to:

• Composite beam model of the stem(in flexion)
• Pressurized vessel model of the shoot apical meristem (SAM)
• Finite elements model of two patches of the L1+L2 tissues
• Two-dimensional cellular stress feedback model
• Sum of strain-sensing model
• Integrative SAM stress feedback model
• Growth-strain feedback model

Steps of Analyzing and Modeling

• Research on how mechanical loads are distributed across constituent plant tissues and cells.
• Analysis of local mechanosensitive pathways in the sensing cells.
• Development of models that describe the correlation between local mechanical sensing and global growth response in plants.
• Mechanobiological integration.

With extensive experience in plant mechanics research, CD BioSciences combines mechanical models to help customers unravel the mechanisms by which plants sense and respond to mechanical stimuli. Our professional scientific services will accelerate the research progress of our customers in the field of plant biomechanics. If you are interested in our services, please contact us for more information.

Reference

1. Moulia, B.; et al. Mechanosensitive control of plant growth: bearing the load, sensing, transducing, and responding. Frontiers in plant science. 2015, 6: 52.

• Services for Organ and Tissue Mechanics Research
• Services for Growth and Morphogenesis Research