Developmental timing in plants

Enrico Coen1 and Przemyslaw Prusinkiewicz2
1 John Innes Centre
2 University of Calgary

Abstract

Plants exhibit reproducible timing of developmental events at multiple scales, from switches in cell identity to maturation of the whole plant. Control of developmental timing likely evolved for similar reasons that humans invented clocks: to coordinate events. However, whereas clocks are designed to run independently of conditions, plant developmental timing is strongly dependent on growth and environment. Using simplified models to convey key concepts, we review how growth-dependent and inherent timing mechanisms interact with the environment to control cyclical and progressive developmental transitions in plants.

Reference

Enrico Coen and Przemyslaw Prusinkiewicz. Developmental timing in plants. Nature Communications, 15:2674, 2024.

Download the paper from the publisher's site or from here.

Download Model 1 here (TGZ archive, 9 KB), produces all panels in Figure 1.
Download Model 2 here (TGZ archive, 12 KB), produces all panels in Figure 2.
Models used to produce the other figures will be available shortly.

You will need VLAB to run the models. They were tested using VLAB verison 5.0 on macOS 10.13 (High Sierra).