Leaf development: a cellular perspective

Abstract

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 and the regulatory units that integrate genetic and environmental information into the developmental program. Therefore, to fundamentally understand leaf development, one needs to be able to reconstruct the developmental pathway of individual cells (and their progeny) from the stem cell niche to their final position in the mature leaf. To build the basis for such understanding, we review current knowledge on the spatial and temporal regulation mechanisms operating on cells, contributing to the formation of a leaf. We focus on the molecular networks that control exit from stem cell fate, leaf initiation, polarity, cytoplasmic growth, cell division, endoreduplication, transition between division and expansion, expansion and differentiation and their regulation by intercellular signaling molecules, including plant hormones, sugars, peptides, proteins, and microRNAs. We discuss to what extent the knowledge available in the literature is suitable to be applied in systems biology approaches to model the process of leaf growth, in order to better understand and predict leaf growth starting with the model species Arabidopsis thaliana.

Envelope K+/H+ Antiporters AtKEA1 and AtKEA2 Function in Plastid Development

“…The defect recovers to a great extent in the expansion and maturation zones ( Figs. 1 and 2; Table I; Kalve et al, 2014). These findings point to a function of AtKEA1 and AtKEA2 in chloroplast development and thylakoid membrane formation.…”

“…differentiated epidermal cells whose primary role is not photosynthetic. In contrast, a new emerging leaf contains three overlapping zones: (1) the cell proliferation zone near the base; (2) the expansion zone at the middle; and (3) the differentiation zone at the tip and periphery (Kalve et al, 2014;Vanhaeren et al, 2015; Fig. 1D).…”

A Journey Through a Leaf: Phenomics Analysis of Leaf Growth inArabidopsis thaliana

“…These cellular events are regulated by complex networks of genes Tsukaya, 2013a;Hepworth and Lenhard, 2014;Kalve et al, 2014a;. By molecularly phenotyping leaves during the different developmental stages, and studying mutants and transgenic lines that alter final leaf size, the molecular networks underlying leaf growth can be unraveled.…”

PaCeQuant: A Tool for High-Throughput Quantification of Pavement Cell Shape Characteristics

“…In addition, leaves control gas exchange and transport of water and nutrients from roots to shoots (Kalve et al, 2014). From a morphological perspective, leaves are remarkably diverse structures.…”