Vendredi 29 mai 2026 à 11h, salle 259 ; IUSTI
Abstract: Sessile organisms, such as plants, rely on growth to explore and colonize their environment. Focusing elongation at the tip is an effective strategy for this invasive lifestyle, enabling rapid adaptation to the chemical and mechanical properties of their surroundings. Tip growth is a striking example of convergent evolution, observed in phylogenetically distant cells such as fission yeast, fungal hyphae, plant pollen tubes, and root hairs. While numerous models of tip growth have been proposed since the 1960s, experimental validation remains limited. Here, we present original micromechanical and microfluidics-inspired experiments on single root hairs, which are cylindrical outgrowths from root epidermal cells, typically 9 μm in diameter and up to 500 μm in length. These experiments allow us to measure fundamental parameters of tip growth and to characterize its sensitivity to the mechanical stiffness of the root environment.