Petri Net Modeling of Root Hair Response to Phosphate Starvation in Arabidopsis Thaliana

Abstract: Limited availability of inorganic phosphate (Pi) in soil is an important constraint to plant growth. In order to understand better the underlying mechanism of plant response to Pi, the response to phosphate starvation in Arabidopsis thaliana was investigated through use of Petri Nets, a formal language suitable for bio-modeling. A. thaliana displays a range of responses to deal with Pi starvation, but special attention was paid to root hair elongation in this study. A central player in the root hair pathway is the transcription factor ROOT HAIR DEFECTIVE 6-LIKE 4 (RSL4), which has been found to be upregulated during the Pi stress. A Petri Net was created which could simulate the gene regulatory networks responsible for the increase in root hair length, as well as the resulting increase in root hair length. Notably, discrepancies between the model and the literature suggested an important role for RSL2 in regulating RSL4. In the future, the net designed in the current study could be used as a platform to develop hypotheses about the interaction between RSL2 and RSL4.