Adrien Heymans
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adrienheymans.bsky.social
Adrien Heymans
@adrienheymans.bsky.social
200 followers 320 following 24 posts
Postdoc @UCLouvain - ELI on plant anatomy.

Lab website : https://www.pepa.science/
Personal webiste : https://heymansadrien.github.io/
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adrienheymans.bsky.social
🌱🧩 How do plant cells get their shape? 🧪

Check out the new #open-access #review exploring the mechanochemical duet between auxin & the cell wall in shaping diverse plant cell types from @srobertgroup.bsky.social's Lab.

🔗 doi.org/10.1111/ppl....

#PlantBiology #CellShape #Auxin #Biomechanics
Epidermal cells acquire different cell shapes to enable their functions and maintain tissue integrity in plants. Meristematic cells differentiate and expand into diverse mature cell types, including jigsaw puzzle-shaped pavement cells (a), round stomatal guard cells (b), elongated epidermal cells in hypocotyls and the apical hook (c), and root epidermal cells with root hairs (d). The spatial distribution and arrangement of cell wall polysaccharides, such as cellulose microfibrils, xyloglucans, and pectins (e.g., homogalacturonan represent as HG), and the abundance of methylester groups on these components in differentiating cells regulate anisotropy during cell growth, enabling the acquisition of specific cell shapes. In addition, proteins like KATANIN and CLASP reorient dynamically the cortical microtubules. These cortical microtubules rearrangement is in response to mechanical cues, either self-generated (as in b, c) or from neighboring cells (a, c), leading to the resulting cell shape. Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Auxin controls cell expansion by regulating cell wall biosynthesis and cell remodeling. Auxin promotes cell expansion by acidifying the cell wall and activating wall synthesis and loosening enzymes. Auxin efflux (PINs) and influx (AUX1) transporters establish concentration gradients in growing tissue. Auxin enters cells via influx transporters and activates the TRANSPORT INHIBITOR RESPONSE 1/AUXIN SIGNALING F-BOX PROTEINS-AUXIN/INDOLE ACETIC ACID (TIR1/AFB-Aux/IAA) nuclear signaling cascade, which regulates auxin-responsive genes, including AUXIN RESPONSE FACTORs (ARFs) and SMALL AUXIN UP RNAs (SAURs). Auxin activates the H+-ATPase proton pump through TRANSMEMBRANE KINASE 1 (TMK1), acidifying the cell wall and triggering loosening enzymes including PECTIN METHYLESTERASEs (PMEs), EXPANSINs, and XYLOGLUCAN:XYLOGLUCOSYL TRANSFERASEs (EXTs). Cellulose microfibrils are synthesized by the plasma membrane-bound cellulose synthase complex (CSC), with cortical microtubules guiding the exocytosis of this complex toward expanding cell edges. Auxin coordinates the reorientation of cortical microtubules and actin filaments to regulate the trafficking of cell wall polysaccharides to ensure proper cell wall expansion and specific cell shape acquisition. Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
May 30, 2025 at 8:29 AM
adrienheymans.bsky.social
🧪🔓 New article from @mutezahmed.bsky.social and @hannahschneider.bsky.social Lab:

"𝐍𝐨𝐝𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐠𝐢𝐧 𝐦𝐚𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐬"⁣
Tina Koehler et al. show that drought responses in maize root anatomy vary by nodal origin.

🔗 doi.org/10.1093/aob/...

#Maize #RootBiology #PlantScience 🌱
Node of origin matters: comparative analysis of soil water limitation effects on nodal root anatomy in maize (Zea mays L.) Cropped Fig. 7 Slope of the GLM (Fig. 2) characterizing the change in a root anatomical phene across nodes (from CR1-CR5) between drought treatments per genotype as integrative drought response indicator. Transparent colors indicate that a phene did not significantly change across nodes (i.e., with age , Fig. 2, GLM p-value > 0.05). Significance levels of treatment differences are given for each root anatomical phene per genotype (p<0.1. , 0.05*, 0.001**, 0.0001***, not significant (>0.1), ns). Tina Koehler, Yunhee Kim, Shu-Yin Tung, Adrien Heymans, Nicolas Tyborski, Franziska Steiner, Andreas J Wild, Johanna Pausch, Mutez A Ahmed, Hannah M Schneider, Node of origin matters: comparative analysis of soil water limitation effects on nodal root anatomy in maize (Zea mays L.), Annals of Botany, 2025;, mcaf075, https://doi.org/10.1093/aob/mcaf075
May 19, 2025 at 1:00 PM
adrienheymans.bsky.social
🧫Does anyone know of database for 2D plant anatomical data?

I’m especially thinking of datasets from: CellSeT, Icy (.xml) or .zip ImageJ ROIs (e.g., via Celer, PaCeQuant, Cellpose, etc.)

Something like what’s being done with ggPlantMap would be amazing!

#PlantScience #OpenScience
2D plant anatomy data Pavement cells from Arabidopsis Root cross section (Pascut et al., 2021: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-24913-z) root tip (https://www.future-science.com/doi/10.2144/000114621) Embryo (https://doi.org/10.1111/nph.12267) Lateral root emergence (https://doi.org/10.3389/fpls.2019.00206) Inflorescence stem cross section (https://academic.oup.com/plcell/article/33/2/200/6017181) ggplantmap @leonardojo.bsky.social (Leonardo and Kajala, 2024: https://doi.org/10.1093/jxb/erae043)
April 11, 2025 at 8:35 AM
adrienheymans.bsky.social
New preprint from @stephanevrg.bsky.social 's lab!

🧪 Simulations + mutant tests show a shift in how we think about plant cell adhesion, challenging "textbook" view on the role of middle lamella.

📄 doi.org/10.1101/2025...

Thank you Özer Erguvan and all co-authors 🔬

#PlantSci #CellBiology
FEM and TEM reveal the process by which cell separation may initiate in the outer epidermal edge filling (OEEF) and propagate to the supracellular outer epidermal wall FEM and TEM reveal the process by which cell separation may initiate in the outer epidermal edge filling (OEEF) and propagate to the supracellular outer epidermal wall (SOEW). CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license. (which was not certified by peer review) is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is bioRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.04.03.646819; this version posted April 6, 2025.
April 7, 2025 at 8:36 AM
adrienheymans.bsky.social
2nd Summer School on Advanced Soil Physics: Soil-Plant-Water Flow 🧪🌱💧
@agrosphere-ibg-3.bsky.social
@UCLouvain - ELI

Designed for master’s and PhD students, as well as early-career scientists in fields such as soil physics, plant physiology, water management, and environmental science

#ISMC
https://soil-modeling.org/activities/summer-school/summer-school-advanced-soil-physics
March 28, 2025 at 9:16 AM
adrienheymans.bsky.social
🌟 In bonus, there is some FEM with #BVPy of Single cells with fragmented or fused vacuole.

Thanks @srobertgroup.bsky.social for introducing me to this strange world 🔬

Check out the Jupyter Notebook 🖥️ and try it for yourself:
github.com/SRobertGroup...
FEM analysis of a single biological cell with a fragmented vacuole. Color gradient depicts the strain magnitude. The cell geometry is a square with rounded corners, where: Length = 6 µm; Corner radius = 1 µm; Cell wall thickness= 2 µm.
February 12, 2025 at 7:36 AM
adrienheymans.bsky.social
🧪🌱Preprint: "Regulation of vacuole fusion, a pivotal mechanism mitigating salt-induced inhibition of root cell growth"

It shows that low-salt stress inhibits vacuole fusion, but may serve as a protective mechanism!

📜Betz et al., 2025 dx.doi.org/10.21203/rs....

#PlantSciences
Fig. 1: Vacuoles respond to salt stress. Confocal images of root cells from Col-0 YFP-VAMP711 treated with 0 mM or 75 mM NaCl for 24 h, showing YFP fluorescence. (b’-b’’) Magnification of (Fig1.a), highlighting vacuole convolution in the medial plane. (c-c "”) 3D projections of YFP-VAMP711 at 0 mM (c") or 75 mM NaCl (c""), showing how a full reconstruction can mask vacuole convolution.
February 12, 2025 at 7:31 AM
adrienheymans.bsky.social
REVIEW: "Root system ideotypes: what is the potential for breeding drought-tolerant grapevine rootstocks?" 🍇

They summarized nicely the #FSPM challenges of mixing different scales of time and space.

📜 Bernardo et al., 2025 doi.org/10.1093/jxb/...
@jxbotany.bsky.social

#PlantSciences 🧪
Root structural and functional traits that interact to bring about root system behavior under drought. One reason root system behavior is so challenging to study and predict is that it results from a complex interaction of structural (red) and functional (cyan) traits that interact across different scales of time (x-axis) and space (y-axis). Even single traits can manifest across different scales of time (whiskers). For example, a complex functional trait like radial hydraulic conductance can change over very short time frames (i.e. minutes to hours) via changes in aquaporin regulation and cell hydraulic conductivity, and over very long time frames (i.e. days to years) via changes in suberization, cell number, and the extent of secondary growth.
February 7, 2025 at 9:39 AM
adrienheymans.bsky.social
Sankey plot.
For #R users there is a great and easy #ggplot library {ggsankey} to make these kind of graphs:
github.com/davidsjoberg...

#DataViz
January 24, 2025 at 2:42 PM
adrienheymans.bsky.social
🌱 Nice #stomata paper with kinetics data 🧪

📜 Shouguang Huang et al. 2024 explore how tailored Ca²⁺ signals control stomatal movement

🔗 www.cell.com/current-biol...

#PlantBiology
December 2, 2024 at 2:53 PM
adrienheymans.bsky.social
🧵 RRQuant: Quantifying Ruthenium Red Staining in Arabidopsis Hypocotyls

🌟 What is #shiny RRQuant?
An image proc. workflow designed to analyze ruthenium red-stained Arabidopsis dark-grown hypocotyls, enabling insights into staining intensity and morphometric data.

🔗 github.com/VergerLab/RR...
RRQuant tools: Image processing workflow for the analysis of ruthenium red stained Arabidopsis dark grown hypocotyls. Image from Figure 1
November 29, 2024 at 3:14 PM
adrienheymans.bsky.social

🌱 New preprint from the Verger Lab @stephanevrg.bsky.social ! 🧪

📜 Imran Baba et al., 2024: doi.org/10.1101/2024...

🔬 Discover how RG-II crosslinking in the plant cell wall, regulated by Boron, is crucial for cell adhesion during growth.

✨ Bonus: RRQuant tool! (Details in thread 👇)

#PlantBiology
Figure 2: Homogalacturonan deficiency and rhamnogalacturonan-II dimerization defects affect adhesion through largely separate pathways. (A-G) Representative max intensity Z-projections of confocal stacks from 4-days-old darkgrown hypocotyl stained with propidium iodide from Col-0 (A), mur1-2 (B), qua2-1 (C), mur1-2 qua2-1 (D), esmd1-1 (E), mur1-2 esmd1-1 (F) and qua2-1 esmd1-1 (G). (H) Schematic representation of Boron-Rhamnogalacturonan-II (RG-II) dimers and Calcium-Homogalacturonan (HG) “egg-box” crosslinking domains along the HG backbone. (I) Quantification of the relative ruthenium red staining intensity (see representative images and length quantification in figure S3). Boxplots summarize three biological replicates, as represented by dots of different colors, and letters describe the statistically significant differences between populations determined by one-way ANOVA followed by Tukey’s HSD test (P < 0.05).[Scale bars, 30µm in images (A-G).] See related content in figure S2 and S3.
November 29, 2024 at 2:54 PM
adrienheymans.bsky.social
New preprint from the Barberon lab!
Seen @PPLplantarum

🧪 Léa Jacquier et al. 2024
Directional Cell-to-cell Transport in Plant Roots

💡Plasmodesmata enable unidirectional nutrient flow in differentiated roots, overcoming apo-barriers like Casparian strips!

🔗 doi.org/10.1101/2024...

#PlantBiology
November 28, 2024 at 1:09 PM
adrienheymans.bsky.social
🔍 Nice Research Story about soil hydraulics and drought response.

- In 2021, a paper presented the theory that soil rather than xylem vulnerability controls stomatal response to drought.

Then now:
- new preprint observed the onset of stomatal closure at the same belowground hydraulic conductance
Figure 3. Time series of soil water potential Ψsoil (a, b, c, d), actual transpiration Tact (e, f, g, h) and collar water potential Ψstem (i, j, k, l) over the experimental period in CBa (brown) (a, e, i, m), CBb (blue) (b, f, j, n), DWa (pink) (c, g, k, o) and DWb (green) (d, h, l, p). In (a), (b), (c) and (d), the dashed colored lines, dotted colored lines and full colored lines correspond respectively to the bulk soil water potentials Ψbulk soil at Page 30/34 depths of 10 cm, 40 cm and 100 cm; the full grey lines are the root-effective soil water potentials Ψsoil_eff, and the dashed grey lines are the predawn water potentials Ψstem_PD. In (e), (f), (g) and (h), the dashed black lines correspond to the potential evapotranspiration Tpot. The times series of Tact and Ψstem are an average of the 3 replicates
June 5, 2024 at 7:44 AM
adrienheymans.bsky.social
Excited to share this work on maize root domestication & adaptation to global water availability! 🌱💧🧪

🌍 Thanks to Peng Yu and all collaborators

🔗https://www.nature.com/articles/s41588-024-01761-3

In addition, there are some cool root water models in use 😉 #CPlantBox #GRANAR-MECHA #MARSHAL
Geographical variability of SRN in traditional varieties of maize (n = 2,424). SRN was determined in globally collected traditional varieties of indicated geographical origin. Domestication and expansion times4 for maize populations are indicated accordingly. The global map of average annual precipitation between 1991 and 2020 is derived from NOAA’s Climate.gov (https://www.climate.gov) and WorldClim prec 30 s (https://www.worldclim.org/data/worldclim21.html#google_vignette). The map was produced in R (v.4.2.2) with the packages ‘maps’ and ‘raster’. Standard uptake fraction of seminal roots and lateral roots as a function of Seminal Root Number (SRN). For each SRN, the average proportion of water uptake per root type is expressed as a ratio relative to overall water uptake. The relative contribution to water uptake is considered separately for the primary root, lateral roots initiated from the primary root, total seminal roots and lateral roots initiated from seminal roots. Note that some of the traditional varieties with lower SRNs already formed very short crown roots but their contribution to water uptake is not considered.
May 28, 2024 at 9:34 AM
adrienheymans.bsky.social
🌐 Sharing resources: 'Data to Viz' www.data-to-viz.com by Yan Holtz & Conor Healy!

📊 Explore a decision tree guiding you through the most common dataset formats, each backed by real-life R examples. #DatatoViz #RStats 🧪
April 30, 2024 at 8:24 AM
adrienheymans.bsky.social
📊 Check out this Git repo! 🚀 Friends don't let friends make bad graphs.

An opinionated essay about good and bad practices in data visualization by @chenxinli2.bsky.social 🧪
#DataViz #GitRepo

github.com/cxli233/Frie... 🌟
April 30, 2024 at 7:40 AM
adrienheymans.bsky.social
Exciting new review out! They explore climate change impacts, adaptation, and mitigation in agroecosystems.

Really like the link to Picasso question: 'when does bull become a bull?'

🔗https://rdcu.be/dDONU

#soilresearch #soilrootmodeling 🧪🌱🌍
April 5, 2024 at 2:36 PM
adrienheymans.bsky.social
🌽Check out the fascinating role of root anatomical variation in maize adaptation to diverse climates and soils. 🌾

Congrats to Chloee: chloeemclaughlin.wordpress.com and the other co-authors.
A nice paper just before the defense of her PhD

🔓 doi.org/10.1111/eva....

#RootAnatomy #GxE 🌱🔬🧪
Home environment predicts root anatomy in Mexican native maize. (a) Random forest (RF) modeling for the ratio of total stele area:total cortical area. Accession point of origin colored by observed TSA:TCA from Burton et al. (2013). Trait-specific significant environmental descriptors used for RF model construction. Smoothed RF predicted TSA:TCA for native Mexican maize. (b) RF predicted vs observed TSA:TCA values for all individuals used in model training and validation. (c) Composite GRANAR representation of observed (obs) and predicted (pred) GRANAR sections for the accessions with the lowest (low, pink) and highest (high, green) observed TSA:TCA. Predicted GRANAR cross-sections use predictions for all traits for which RF models were constructed. Hydraulic properties were estimated with MECHA
March 11, 2024 at 9:05 AM
adrienheymans.bsky.social
🌱🧪 New review alert! Nice summary of the fascinating world of plant cell adhesion and growth regulation.

Imran and Stephane explores the intricate balance between tissue integrity and development.

doi.org/10.3389/fphg... #CellAdhesion #PlantScience #UPSC
Different examples of the processes involving cell separation in the model plant Arabidopsis. Here, it display some of the main processes that involve cell separation during various developmental stages and during specific periodic changes in Arabidopsis, used as an example here. These processes are not just limited to this model species only but can be involved in other plant species too. These different instances of cell separation processes include (A) Floral organ abscission of sepals, petals, stamen, carpels including pollen separation (B) Lateral root emergence through the cell layers of cortex and epidermis (C) Root cap sloughing and border cell separation from the root tip (D) Seed dispersal after the maturation from the siliques (E) Intrusive growth of cambial cells in inflorescence stems (F) Intercellular space formation in the mesophyll and cortex parenchyma. (Some segments from this figure were generated with the help of Biorender)
February 26, 2024 at 8:31 AM