AsianScientist (Mar. 20, 2015) – Carnivorous plants have captured the imagination with their ability to trap and eat small animals. In a study published in Nature Communications, scientists have shown how pitcher plants developed their uniquely shaped leaves.
The research team from The Graduate University for Advanced Studies (SOKENDAI) thoroughly examined the process of leaf development in the Sarracenia purpurea pitcher plant by scanning electron microscopy, gene expression analyses, cell division pattern analyses, and a mathematical reconstruction of pitcher morphogenesis. They showed that a tissue-specific regulation of oriented cell division is the key factor for pitcher development.
First author Mr. Kenji Fukushima, a graduate student of SOKENDAI at the National Institute for Basic Biology, National Institutes of Natural Sciences, found that at the beginning of development the leaf primordium of a pitcher leaf is flat.
His team also found that the crucial difference between pitcher and flat leaf development is the direction of cell divisions in the central part of the basal side of the leaf primordium. In a flat leaf, cell divisions occur vertically against the leaf surface, but in a specific part of Sarracenia leaves, cell divisions occur in parallel to the leaf surface.
This difference makes a ridge and a hollow on the leaf and then forms the pitcher shape as the leaf continues to grow. A computational model of leaf morphogenesis, with the angle and number of cell divisions included as parameters, also supports these results.
“Organ morphogenesis is a complicated process. In this study, the classification of cell positions worked well to find key points of tangled cell dynamics. This work would explain how plants attain drastic morphological evolution through cellular changes,” said Fukushima.
Professor Mitsuyasu Hasebe, the team leader of the research group said, “One of most mysterious questions in evolutionary biology is the evolution of novel complex traits. This study shows that change at the cellular level results in quite a big change in the morphology.”
The article can be found at: Fukushima et al. (2015) Oriented Cell Division Shapes Carnivorous Pitcher Leaves of Sarracenia purpurea.
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Source: SOKENDAI.
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