- Plants projects in FP6-

AGRON-OMICS project

FP6 priority: LIFE SCIENCES, GENOMICS AND BIOTECHNOLOGY FOR HEALTH

Projects acronym: AGRON-OMICS

Start and ending date: 01/11/06 – 31/10/11

Budget: 12 Million Euros

Name coordinator: Pierre Hilson
VIB Department of Plant Systems Biology, Ghent University
Technologiepark 927, 9052 Gent, BELGIUM
Tel: +32-93313830
Fax: +32-93313809

Email: pihil[at]psb.vib-ugent.be

Full Title: Arabidopsis growth network integrating OMICS technologies

Contract number: LSHG-CT-2006-037704

IP

Plants are crucial to mankind as they supply food, chemicals, pharmaceuticals and renewable sources of materials and energy. Yet the processes by which they grow are poorly understood. Although some of the key factors involved in plant organ growth have already been identified, the circuitry that links the different levels of organisation (whole plant, organ, cell, molecular module, molecule) remains to be uncovered. Fortunately, for the first time, techniques exist or can be developed to characterise a multicellular system exhaustively at all relevant levels. The main goals of AGRON-OMICS are:
- to survey systematically with an array of high throughput methods what are the molecular components driving growth in the cells of a developing Arabidopsis leaf,
- to understand how these elements interact and coordinate their action across levels of organisation, and
-to explain quantitative growth phenotypes at the molecular level through inference and mathematical modelling, followed by further experimentation.
The partnership tackling these ambitious goals has two poles: BIOLOGY, the laboratories involved study the main known molecular pathways that regulate and implement leaf growth, including cell cycle, cell wall biosynthesis and remodelling, carbon and nitrogen metabolism, and photosynthesis; TECHNOLOGY, each of them offers a unique platform chosen to record variables describing Arabidopsis plant and growth, from the macroscopic analysis of leaf size and shape, to the in depth analysis of molecular cell components. AGRON-OMICS will establish the infrastructure necessary to organise its multidisciplinary research programme, then to integrate and interpret a wide range of data sets. With a strong emphasis on DISSEMINATION, the project will create knowledge used in industrial applications and will yield data, tools, resources and novel technologies that will be released to the research community at large as soon as practically feasible.

1- VIB – Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium
2- Institut National de Recherche Agronomique, Versaille, France
3- Max Planck Institute for Molecular Plant Physiology, Potsdam-Golm, Germany
4- ETH Zurich, Switzerland
5- John Innes Centre, United Kingdom
6- Institut National de Recherche Agronomique, Montpellier, France
7- Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology, Tübingen, Germany
8- Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research, Cologne, Germany
9- Warwick Systems Biology Center, University of Warwick, United Kingdom
10- Nottingham Arabidopsis Stock Centre, University of Nottingham, United Kingdom
11- Plant Research International, Wageningen, The Netherlands
12- Instituto de Bioingeniería – Universidad Miguel Hernández, Elche, Spain
13- Maia Scientific, Geel, Belgium
14- Institut National de Recherche Agronomique, Evry, France
Contact details available on the project website at : http://www.agron-omics.eu/index.php/consortium/partners

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