Plants are vital to human life and health and are essential to mitigate the effects of climate change and population growth. Multiples lines of evidence indicate that spatial 3D organisation nuclear DNA is critical in this adapting to different environmental conditions and the Impact of Nuclear Domains On Gene Expression and Plant Traits (INDEPTH) network will decipher how nuclear architecture, chromatin organisation and gene expression are connected and modified in response to internal and external cues.
To address this challenge, the INDEPTH Action gathes a pan-European network addressing this by bringing state of the art technologies and fostering multidisciplinary approaches at research, training, education and industrial levels in high and super resolution microscopy, 3D-image analysis and software development, chromatin domain mapping, genomics, bioinformatics and plant phenotyping.
Standard protocols and procedures will be defined in these fields and relevant omics and 3D images datasets will be deposited in a public repository for inter-laboratory techniques and know-how between partners through STSMs and Training Schools.
INDEPTH will ultimately lead to a better understanding of agriculturally relevant challenges such as complex plant traits and their interactions with the environment in the context of climate change.
A Full description of INDEPTH activities can be downloaded from the COST website (PDF).
INDEPTH is split into five working groups that cover all aspects of the Action topic:
- WG1: Quantitative imaging and analysis of the plant nucleus in 3D
- WG2: Transcriptional regulation through association of chromatin domains with nuclear compartments
- WG3: Structure of nuclear domains and the functional output for plant traits
- WG4: Storage, Data management and integrative analysis
- WG5: Dissemination and Training
INDEPTH activities are overseen by the activities of the Management Committee (MC). The MC is made up of individual members from each member country.
The Minutes from INDEPTH MC meetings can be download here:
- MC5 – 26/5/2020
- MC4 – 11/12/2019
- MC3 – 25/2/2018
- MC2 – 3/12/2018
- MC1 – 28/11/2017