Modeling and characterizing cell growth in moss

Abstract

The moss Physcomitrella patens is an excellent model organism due to its simple development, complete well-annotated genome sequence, and powerful genetics. In this work, we developed a coarse-grained model of moss growth which can be used to characterize the plant's early development composed of protonemal cells. To understand the morphology of the developing plants, we measured various metrics including their area, solidity, eccentricity, circularity, and fractal dimension. We then created a model of moss growth based on L-systems that recapitulates experimental results. We quantified the age of individual plants by their morphological characteristics using the plastochron index, and compared our results to those obtained by classifying the plants by time. The model can be used to detect changes in the moss plant shape through comparison to wild-type plants in metric-space, and will provide further insight into characterization of different mutant phenotypes with altered plant development.

Authors

  • Steven Vandal

    Department of Physics, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester, MA, USA

  • Nelaka Govinna

    Aramco Research Center - Boston, Aramco Research Center - Houston, None, NOAA/ESRL/Global Monitoring Division, University of Connecticut, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Department of Biology and Biotechnology, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester, MA, USA, Department of Physics, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester, MA, USA, Clark University, Tufts University

  • Nelaka Govinna

    Aramco Research Center - Boston, Aramco Research Center - Houston, None, NOAA/ESRL/Global Monitoring Division, University of Connecticut, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Department of Biology and Biotechnology, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester, MA, USA, Department of Physics, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester, MA, USA, Clark University, Tufts University

  • Nelaka Govinna

    Aramco Research Center - Boston, Aramco Research Center - Houston, None, NOAA/ESRL/Global Monitoring Division, University of Connecticut, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Department of Biology and Biotechnology, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester, MA, USA, Department of Physics, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester, MA, USA, Clark University, Tufts University

  • Luis Vidali

    Department of Biology and Biotechnology, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester, MA, Department of Biology and Biotechnology, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester, MA, USA

  • Erkan Tuzel

    Department of Physics, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester, MA, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Department of Physics, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester, MA, USA