A Software Architecture for Developmental Modeling in Plants: the Computable Plant Project

Motivation. We present the software architecture of the Computable Plant Project, a multidisciplinary computationally based approach to the study of plant development. Arabidopsis thaliana is used as a model organism, and shoot apical meristem development as a model process. Meristems are the plant tissues where regulated cell division and differentiation lead to plant parts such as flowers and leaves. We are using green fluorescent proteins to mark specific cell types and acquire time series of threedimensional images via laser scanning confocal microscopy. To support this we have developed an interoperable architecture for experiment design that involves automated code generation, computational modeling, and image analysis.