ERC Starting Grant · 2022
Low oxygen, key ingredient of the plant stem cell niche?
Oxygen (O2) is essential for efficient energy conversion by multicellular organisms, including plants. Therefore, environmental conditions where O2 is limited (hypoxia) such as during flooding stress, pose a severe threat to plant survival and can lead to death when prolonged. I recently discovered that plant stem cells of the shoot apical meristem (SAM) are embedded in a local hypoxic niche and that this condition is even important for meristem activity. This suggests that local hypoxia may play a positive role in regulating meristems, despite being harmful to other plant tissue. Safeguarding the stem cell pool of the SAM is especially important for plant fitness, since it not only…
From the public funding record at EU CORDIS. Describes the funded project, not the reviews below.