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Julien Derr

Julien Derr

Université Paris Diderot

Julien Derr has a multidisciplinary background. Trained at ESPCI Paris, he started his career in solid state physics (working on quantum phase transitions, and silicon nanocrystals) before being interested by biophysics. He is generally interested in the concepts of self-organization. He has in particular been working on self-organization of proteins or RNA bases. Since 2010, he is “maitre de conférences” at université de Paris Diderot where he is interested in morphogenesis. He wants to understand pattern formation mechanisms, in living organisms, plants or also geophysical context.

Morphogenetic motions of plants

In this presentation, I will talk about plant growth from the provocative point of view of the physicist. The plant will be seens as a physical system, where all the biology will be abusively reduced to miscellaneous active phenomena (known or not). I will focus on th particular aspect of the motions induced by plant growth. We call them morphogenetic motions because they are motions linked to the development and growth of the plant. First part of the talk will be an introduction to plant growth and morphogenetic motions, as well as some observations of the phenomena. In the second part we will investigate in more detail the case of leaves development for simple or compound leaves. We will show how the rich morphogenetic motions are strongly related to posture regulation mechanisms.