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Background and challenges

The mechanisms involved in this development are complex. They involve multiple regulators of different types (hormones, nutrients), controlled by different processes and at different scales (local, remote). Numerical models have proven to be effective tools for understanding some of these complex regulations, as they simulate non-intuitive behaviour induced by this complexity. They make it possible to test regulation hypotheses in experiments comparing the behaviour of a real and a virtual plant. Today, there are digital tools for simulating virtual plants, such as the L-Py platform.

However, their effective use for the virtual exploration of regulatory networks at the plant scale requires, on the one hand, facilitating their user-friendliness and interactivity with biologists and, on the other hand, improving the dialogue between biologists and modellers, who work at different scales (mechanisms vs. plant behaviour).

Goals

The Physioccope project aims to provide an efficient tool for smooth and collaborative interaction between biologists working at different scales through a virtual plant model. The tool will be developed specifically to understand how light regulates bud outgrowth, but it is designed to be used more broadly. The project’s objectives are threefold:

1. The integration of the mechanistic network controlling bud outgrowth along an axis into a virtual plant, coded in L-Py; 
2. The development of an intuitive tool for interaction and visualisation of this network via the virtual plant, based on the coupling between L-Py and the MorphoNet browser (dedicated to the interaction with morphodynamic structures);
3. The identification of new hypotheses on the bud outgrowth regulation network by comparing the behaviour of the plant between virtual and real experiments.

Contact - coordination :

Units involved and partners

INRAE participants

Partners