Tug-of-war between growing tissues shapes a fruit and its seed count
Wang B, Gómez-Felipe A, Bauer A, Fenestre A, Giri A
Plant Development
The curve of a mustard-family seed pod in your garden, and how many seeds it holds, depends on fast-growing walls stretching a slower central strip like a tight rubber band.
A young fruit has fast-growing outer walls and a slow-growing central strip where the seeds attach. The fast walls pull the slow strip longer, and that stretching helps decide how many seeds form. If you remove one wall, the fruit bends toward the slow side, and after fertilization the strip buckles when it's held back from lengthening, which turns the direction of growth.
Key Findings
Rapid valve expansion mechanically stretches the replum, amplifying its elongation; reducing valve growth lowers replum anisotropy and limits ovule production.
Removing one valve causes reproducible bending of the gynoecium toward the slower-growing replum.
After fertilization, replum cell files elongate faster than valves, and when this elongation is constrained the replum buckles, reorienting tissue-level growth.
chevron_right Technical Summary
Fruit shape in the model plant Arabidopsis comes from tissues pushing and pulling on each other as they grow at different speeds. Fast-growing outer walls stretch the slow central strip that holds the seeds, which affects how many seeds the fruit can make.
Abstract Preview
Original paper
Mechanical conflicts control fruit morphogenesis in Arabidopsis.
Plant organ shape emerges from coordinated growth between adjacent tissues and from the mechanical conflicts that arise when growth rates differ. In Arabidopsis, the gynoecium, the female reproduct...
open_in_new Read full abstractAbstract copyright held by the original publisher.
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