Differential Growth in Periclinal and Anticlinal Walls during Lobe Formation in Arabidopsis Cotyledon Pavement Cells

Author Profile

William J. Armour

Current Position: Postdoctoral researcher, School of Biological Sciences, University of Sydney, Australia.

Education: PhD (2013) in Plant Cell Biology and BSc (Hons I 2009) in Biology and Plant Science at University of Sydney, Australia.

Non-scientific Interests: Snorkeling, traveling, learning Spanish, model trains and cooking Mexican food.

For my undergraduate honors thesis, I worked in Prof. Steve Simpson's lab investigating how locusts mechanically break up grass leaves into small particles during ingestion. I was surprised to find that their ability to create higher particle surface area to aid nutrient absorption depended on the grass species and the age of the insect. This research ignited my passion for microscopy and computer image analysis. During this work I saw lobed pavement cells at the margins of grass leaves where younger instar locusts particularly struggled to bite into the leaf. I found the shape of these cells curious and worked on them with Prof. Robyn Overall and Dr. Debbie Barton for my PhD. We realized that pavement cells would be an ideal system to study how relatively complex cell shapes form by following the same cells during their development. Using an airbrush (which I normally use to paint model trains) I applied fluorescent paint dots to the surface of Arabidopsis cotyledons and followed the development of the shape of individual pavement cells. Later, I was excited to image the arrangements of the cytoskeletal filaments during the development of these cells.