Every plant begins its life as a single cell, which divides, differentiates, and gradually gives rise to the intricate tissues and organs we see. Initially, plant cells are highly versatile…

A full-time tenure-track assistant professor position at the IRBV, Université de Montréal.

Plant cells are totipotent, meaning individual cells have the potential to develop into a full organism, a property unique to the zygote for animals. However, in most species for most cells, plant cells are not spontaneously totipotent, since they must be treated with specific hormone combinations to unlock their totipotency. Species within the Kalanchoe genus is unique as they spontaneously develop foliar embryos that are fully realized plantlets with shoot and root from notches along the edges of leaves. We speculate that the progenitor cells that give rise to these foliar embryos are totipotent, and we are using single cell techniques to identify & characterize them. In addition to being a fundamental process for plant biology, we foresee unlocking totipotency has many biotechnological applications, such as faciliating genetic transformation and the development of synthetic organs of biomanufacturing.

Non-cell autonomous signalling is a mechanism by which stem cells are maintained across the tree of life. In plants, many stem cell populations are regulated by peptide ligands related to CLAVATA3, w...