Plant Biology Profile

This course is a specialization module in Functional Plant Biology that addresses the mechanisms underlying the major stages of plant development.

It draws on knowledge derived mainly from the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana and addresses the following concepts from a molecular, cellular, and physiological perspective:

• Roles and functioning of the main plant hormones.
• Development of male and female gametes, fertilization.
• Development of the embryo, seed, and fruit.
• Functioning of root and shoot meristems (vegetative and floral).
• Flower architecture.
• Adaptive development mechanisms in response to abiotic factors: light, gravity, cold.

Certain aspects of development will also be analyzed from an evolutionary perspective by studying the role of developmental genes in the diversification and evolution of developmental processes in terrestrial plants (evolution of the root system, floral architecture, etc.).

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This course describes the methodology used by life science researchers to communicate the results of their experiments, both in writing and orally. As English is the common language of international researchers, a large part of this course is taught in English.

Written communication is addressed through the study of the (macro) structure of a research article and an examination of the publication process in scientific journals. Several elements of written structure (micro) are examined in order to understand the differences between scientific English and literary English: clarity, cohesion, and coherence.

These studies are supplemented by a supervised project during the semester, in which students are required to analyze a research article recently published in scientific literature and transcribe it in the form of an oral presentation (conference) in English.

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Bioinformatics is a discipline at the crossroads of computer science, mathematics, and life sciences. It relies in particular on the use and development of computer tools for analyzing massive amounts of biological data. Ultimately, this big data can be organized into online searchable databases so that users can extract data relevant to a biological problem.

The "Bioinformatics Applied to Plant Biology" teaching unit aims to familiarize students with the use of databases and offer an introduction to data exploration using R software.

Almost all of the teaching will take the form of practical case studies in the computer lab in small groups of students.

In the first part, students will learn the basics of the R programming language, enabling them to organize and clean their raw data so that it can be fully exploited for subsequent analysis. They will then learn how to produce clear graphical representations based on biological data. Particular attention will be paid to writing reusable scripts and choosing the appropriate graphics for the calculations, depending on the biological question.

In the second part, students will use general databases such as NCBI or databases exclusively dedicated to the model plant Arabidopsis (TAIR) to perform data mining.

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Molecular biology is not only a fascinating subject in its own right, but it also provides other biological disciplines (cell biology, genetics, physiology, etc.) with fantastic tools for modifying and quantifying genes and their products.

The EU is deepening its understanding of the mechanisms involved in the organization, maintenance, replication, and expression (transcription, post-transcriptional modifications, translation) of eukaryotic genomes.

In particular, we will explore the properties of information-carrying macromolecules (DNA, RNA, proteins) and how interactions between them explain the functioning of eukaryotic cells and their adaptation to the environment and the development of organisms.

At the same time, the main techniques used to monitor or modify gene expression, or to study the mechanisms of this expression, will be presented in lectures and explored in greater depth in tutorials through the analysis of results.

Thus, the tutorials address these topics in the form of (1) exercises that allow students to test their understanding of the knowledge described above, and (2) experiments taken from scientific articles for analysis. In this way, the fundamentals of scientific reasoning and critical analysis of results will be acquired and/or further developed.

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Functional genetics aims to better understand the relationships between genotype and phenotype. This course integrates the various aspects of gene and genome function analysis at the whole-genome level using in vivo approaches, as well as transcriptional regulation and regulation of eukaryotic genome expression. The course is illustrated with concrete examples in developmental genetics in physiological and pathological contexts.

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