Discretizing the cellular bases of plant morphogenesis: Emerging properties from subcellular and noisy patterning
Résumé
A fundamental question in biology is how multicellular organ-isms robustly shape their organs. In the past decade, much progress has been made not just in identifying biochemical and biophysical factors underpinning morphogenesis, but also in analyzing their spatio-temporal dynamics. A remarkable outcome of such analyses is that morphogenesis involves high levels of heterogeneity and fluctuations at local scales. Although this could be considered as white noise to be aver-aged over time, there is increasing evidence that these het-erogeneities and fluctuations are instructive cues for development. In this review, we highlight some of the new questions that such heterogeneities raise for plant morpho-genesis. We also investigate their effects across scales, focusing on how subcellular heterogeneities contribute to organ shape robustness and evolvability.