Chloroplasts' Choreography: On Mechanisms of Light Adaptation in Plant Cells

Plant cells have to adapt to the ever-changing conditions of their environment, leading to the evolution of intriguing strategies across scales, from cells to the organism. Using experiments and mathematical models, we will discuss how plants re-arrange the internal structure of cells by the active motion of chloroplasts, to remain efficient during photosynthesis. We will show that the chloroplasts can behave like densely packed light-sensitive active particles, whose non-gaussian athermal fluctuations can lead to various self-organization scenarios, including active glassy dynamics under dim lights and highly packed active clusters under intense light. In the end, I will discuss a series of open problems in the physics and biology of chloroplast motion.