The pattern of cell division, growth and separation during leaf development determines the pattern and volume of airspace in a leaf. The resulting balance of cellular material and airspace is expected to significantly influence the primary function of the leaf, photosynthesis, and yet the manner and degree to which cell division patterns affect airspace networks and photosynthesis remains large...

Proserpinaca palustris L. produced juvenile leaves on 8-hour photoperiods, adult leaves on 12-hour photoperiods, and adult leaves and flowers on 14-hour photoperiods. Treatment of plants growing on 8- and 14-hour photoperiods with gibberellic acid caused stem elongation and inhibited flowering. The treated plants on 8-hour photoperiods produced adult-like leaves.

The analysis of biological shapes has applications in many areas of biology, and tools exist to quantify organ shape and detect shape differences between species or among variants. However, such measurements do not provide any information about the mechanisms of shape generation. Quantitative data on growth patterns may provide insights into morphogenetic processes, but since growth is a comple...

PREMISE OF THE STUDY How leaf shape is regulated is a long-standing question in botany. For diverse groups of dicotyledon species, lamina folding along the veins and geometry of the space available for the primordia can explain the palmate leaf morphology. Dubbed the kirigami theory, this hypothesis of fold-dependent leaf shape regulation has remained largely theoretical. Using Acer pseudoplata...

Transgenic tobacco (Nicofiana fabacum L. cv W38) plants with an antisense gene directed against the mRNA of ribulose-1,sbiphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase (Rubisco) activase grew more slowly than wild-type plants in a C0,-enriched atmosphere, but eventually attained the same height and number of leaves. Compared with the wild type, the anti-activase plants had reduced CO, assimilation rates, nor...

Through its photosynthetic capacity the leaf provides the basis for growth of the whole plant. In order to improve crops for higher productivity and resistance for future climate scenarios, it is important to obtain a mechanistic understanding of leaf growth and development and the effect of genetic and environmental factors on the process. Cells are both the basic building blocks of the leaf a...

How do plants position their leaves and flowers around the stem in such regular patterns? Auxin is well established as an essential regulator. Now, the modification of a structural cell wall component is shown to have a dramatic impact.

Leaf morphology is one of the most variable, yet inheritable, traits in the plant kingdom. How plants develop a variety of forms and shapes is a major biological question. Here, we discuss some recent progress in understanding the development of compound or dissected leaves in model species, such as tomato (Solanum lycopersicum), Cardamine hirsuta and Medicago truncatula, with an emphasis on re...

Eudicot leaves have astoundingly diverse shapes. The central problem addressed in this paper is the developmental origin of this diversity. To investigate this problem, we propose a computational model of leaf development that generalizes the largely conserved molecular program for the reference plants Arabidopsis thaliana, Cardamine hirsuta and Solanum lycopersicum. The model characterizes lea...

The maize leaf is composed of distinct regions with clear morphological boundaries. The ligule and auricle mark the boundary between distal blade and proximal sheath and are amenable to genetic study due to the array of mutants that affect their formation without severely affecting viability. Herein, we describe the novel maize gene extended auricle1 (eta1), which is essential for proper format...