A novel kinematic method for quantifying gravitropic and proprioceptive sensitivities illustrated on Arabidopsis wild type and IX myosin mutants
Résumé
Gravitropic movements, which are essential in controlling plant shape and function, are driven by the sensing of organ inclination and organ curvature (proprioception [1]). Although crucial for understanding the growth dynamics and the final phenotype, disentangling these two sensitivities is challenging. In our two-step method, based on [2], the plant is first tilted to the horizontal to trigger tropic bending. Then, a clinostatic rotation around the horizontal axis is set to suspend graviception, and the stem straightens under pure proprioceptive driving. We implemented this method together with time-lapse image analysis using a novel version of the Interekt software [3]. We illustrate this automated pipeline on Arabidopsis WT and proprioception-deficient XI myosin mutants.
[1] Moulia et al. 2021, https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abc6868
[2] Okamoto et al. 2015, https://doi.org/10.1038/nplants.2015.31
[3] Hartmann, Chauvet-Thiry et al. 2022, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-0716-1677-2_9