Know more

The cuticle of plants is a complex hydrophobic composite of lipidic (cutin, a polyester of hydroxylated fatty acids) and polysaccharide (pectin, cellulose) polymers and phenolic compounds. On the surface of all aerial organs, the cuticle has crucial biological functions for the development of the plant and its resistance to biotic and abiotic stress.

The determination of the structure and architecture of the cuticle of plants is a prerequisite to understand and control their properties in the context of sustainable agriculture and plant transformation. However, this information is currently very limited.

The COPLAnAR project is based on the integration of complementary analytical approaches, involving structural biology and functional genomics.

The results of this collaboration will provide new insights into the structure-function relationships of lipid and carbohydrate polymers in the cuticle, and will benefit crop breeding as well as the design of new biomimetic materials. The proposed research will open new avenues to address the challenges of sustainable agriculture and the bioeconomy of the 21st century.

COPLAnAR is an ANR project coordinated by the ELIPS team of the BIA laboratory over the period 2022-2026. The scientific partnership includes 3 other BIA teams (BIBS, PVPP, MC2) and 5 other academic laboratories i) the APEX platform of the PanTher unit (Oniris Nantes, France), ii) the TBI laboratory (Toulouse, France) ; iii) the Fruit Biology and Pathology laboratory (Bordeaux, France), iv) the Institute of Chemistry-Physics (Orsay, France) and v) Cornell University (Ithaca, USA)