HORMONAL NETWORK CONTROLLING THE OVULE DEVELOPMENT IN ARABIDOPSIS THALIANA

During my Ph.D., I have focused my research to uncover the molecular network controlling ovule development in Arabidopsis thaliana. This thesis is organized in an introduction part, in which I have described what it is known about ovule development including the description of the role of hormones. Then, in chapter 1, I have described the research performed to study the role of auxin and auxin polar transport in ovule development. Chapter 2 is focalized on the study that I have performed to identify and characterized genes involved in auxin biosynthesis during ovule development in Arabidopsis. Chapter 3 described the results obtained manipulating the cytokinin amount in ovule. Cytokinins have an antagonistic role respect to auxin during differentiation and development. I have studied cytokinins pathway using specific markers line and by genetic approaches. In the work proposed in the Chapter 4 the studies on the influence of auxin, cytokinin and transcription factor on ovule development, converge in one single line of investigation and a model for ovule organogenesis is proposed. In the last chapter the final discussion is presented with a general overview of the results and the suggestion of future experiments that could be performed in the near future.