PubMed · 2026-05-15
Plants build orderly shapes and tissues not by suppressing randomness in how cells grow, but by harnessing it. This review argues that biological systems actively tune cell-growth variability to achieve robust, adaptable organ forms.
Heterogeneous (uneven) cell growth in plants is the default state, arising from both biological noise and differential chemical signals — not an exception to be corrected.
Plants actively tune the level of growth variability: they can amplify it to create distinct cell types and tissue patterns, or buffer it to maintain consistent organ shapes under environmental stress.
Robust, reproducible organ forms (like a recognizable leaf shape) emerge from, not despite, noisy and nonlinear interactions among cells — suggesting variability is a feature, not a flaw, of plant development.