Professor Chen Chunli from the College of Life Science & Technology at Huazhong Agricultural University, in collaboration with partners from Durham University in the UK, published an opinion paper titled "Necessity for modeling hormonal crosstalk in Arabidopsis root development?" in Trends in Plant Science online on March 12.

This study introduces a new research direction for addressing major issues in plant root development that go beyond experimental observations by utilizing hormone crosstalk modeling.

The article suggests developing a comprehensive model to integrate all experimental data for deciphering the mechanisms of root growth. In the process of Arabidopsis root development, each hormone has its own biosynthesis, transport, and metabolism pathways. Therefore, interactions among multiple hormones occur at various levels of gene expression, signal transduction, and metabolism. Simulating crosstalk among multiple hormones requires integrating these different regulatory components. Thus, a crosstalk model is a multi-level model that integrates signaling, transport, gene expression, and metabolism, serving as a comprehensive system for analysis. Additionally, depending on the research objectives, different modules of the model can be extracted at different levels.

A schematic illustration for the development of a hormone crosstalk model aimed at integrating all experimental data. [Photo/news.hzau.edu.cn]

This research method is based on the complex interactions among auxin, cytokinin, and ethylene in Arabidopsis roots, as well as the Arabidopsis plant digital root model, summarized by the international collaborative research team in the article published in Molecular Plant in December 2017. The team further established a predictive model for the ethylene-mediated distribution of auxin and cytokinin in Arabidopsis roots, which was published in Plant Communication in March 2024.