Distributed information processing in plant organs

Extensive efforts have revealed genetic programs plants use to control their development in response to the environment. Much less is known about how the output of these programs is impacted by the multicellular context they operate within. In order to better understand how collections of cells in plants process information, we are taking a computational perspective of development and examining parallels between these naturally evolved biological organisms and engineered computational systems. Specifically investigating whether the control principles of distributed computation apply to plant organs. In an effort to address this, we are viewing plant organs as integrated systems of interacting cells, and mapping intercellular connectivity into networks. This provides a quantitative approach to understanding cellular patterning, while mapping the multicellular “circuitry” plants use to perform collective information processing. By integrating these topological templates with mathematical models describing the genetic programs that operate within individual cells, the impact of each cell organization and communication on developmental outputs is being examined. This is providing insight into the extent to which development is controlled beyond intracellular genetic mechanisms.