In plants, the ad/abaxial regulatory network governs some of the most basic elements of plant growth and function. In the simple experimental plant Arabidopsis, this includes the organization of the cells in the leaf necessary for efficient light capture and gas exchange. This system also controls the formation of new branches. To date a small set of transcription factors - proteins that regulate the activity of genes - have been found to control this regulatory network. This project will identify the genes that these factors control and will discover how these genes act together in a network to result in the highly coordinated growth that occurs in the plant. Understanding how the plant body is formed is fundamental to our understanding of plants that we grow for food, fiber or fuel as well as to our more general understanding of the natural environment. This understanding can be used to improve our approaches to managing our agricultural and wild lands.
