Bogdziewiez, Léa
- Department of Forest Genetics and Plant Physiology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
Abstract
Cell adhesion is fundamental for multicellular integrity. In plants, cell-cell adhesion is mediated by the cell wall, a polysaccharide-protein matrix constantly remodelled to enable growth. Adhesion and communication between cells and between the plasma membrane, and the cell wall are essential to respond to mechanical constraints. Despite its well-established importance, plant adhesion remains poorly understood due to limited tools for measuring the forces involved. This thesis focuses on developing novel methods to study plant cell adhesion at both single-cell and tissue levels, providing new tools to advance our fundamental understanding.
Single cells offer a simplified model for investigating cell-cell adhesion. Protoplasts are widely used in plant research, industry and breeding. However, they are not considered “true” plant cells as they lack a cell wall. Since reliable wall recovery is challenging, we created a fluorescence-microscopy pipeline to quantitatively assess wall recovery post-protoplasting, streamlining culture optimization. Using this workflow, we optimize our protoplast culture conditions to promote cell wall recovery and produce single plant cells. We showed the pipeline reproducibility and versatility in collaborative studies.
Adapting animal-cell methods, we tested adhesion assays and implemented two complementary approaches: microfluidic shear assays and optical-tweezer force measurements. These quantified interactions between the plasma membrane and wall components, revealing new phenomena such as time dependent adhesion strengthening, tether formation, and cycles of detachment/reattachment.
At the tissue level, we established an imaging workflow to detect adhesion defects in Arabidopsis seedling hypocotyls, enabling phenotypic comparisons.
Collectively, these contributions provide a versatile toolbox for probing plant cell adhesion from subcellular to organ levels, laying groundwork for future studies of plant tissue adhesion mechanisms.
Keywords
Celladhesion; cellvägg; protoplaster; cellväggsåterhämtning; metodutveckling; kvantifiering; bildbaserad pipeline
Published in
Acta Universitatis Agriculturae Sueciae
2025, number: 2025:75
Publisher: Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
SLU Authors
UKÄ Subject classification
Botany
Cell Biology
Publication identifier
- DOI: https://doi.org/10.54612/a.5uu0ccufug
- ISBN: 978-91-8124-059-7
- eISBN: 978-91-8124-105-1
Permanent link to this page (URI)
https://res.slu.se/id/publ/142476