What is it about?
In plants, cell division occurs at growth centres that contain stem cells. These are called meristems. Active meristems can stop new growth centres from emerging, and plants can regenerate growth centres from other tissues if they are damaged. I looked at growth centres in liverworts, a plant with streamlined development that is easy to use for experiments. Using lasers to precisely target and kill certain cells and tissues, I revealed new information on how plant growth centres develop and function.
Featured Image
Photo by Anna Gavrilova on Unsplash
Why is it important?
These findings show that there are a minimum number of specific cells required to maintain growth centres in liverworts. These cells appear to communicate with each other directly within the growth centre, and can adapt in response to damage. They also communicate with other growth centres in the plant, but these communication signals are only transmitted by certain tissue types. If all growth centres are removed, then new ones emerge, and these compete with each other until only the most advanced remain. This implies that a balance is needed between growing and non-growing regions. Even though liverworts have relatively simple development, the genes and underlying mechanisms are found in all plant species, including crop plants. Therefore the information gained by investigating and understanding liverwort growth centres can be applied more generally in plant biology.
Perspectives
Plants, particularly liverworts, have amazing ability to regenerate growth by "reprogramming" existing tissues to become new growth centres, which then form new plants. This would be the equivalent of cutting off your finger and having it grow back into a complete copy of yourself. What is exciting about this research is that I have used laser microscopy to explore the architecture of liverwort growth centres in greater detail than ever before, discovering unappreciated complexity in how it is maintained and regenerates. My work found that growth centres communicate at different levels, which opens up possibilities to learn about how plant cells use hormones and other signals to co-ordinate their development. By first exploring this in simpler cases, such as liverworts, we can understand and apply this to more complex scenarios like crop plants in agriculture.
Alan Marron
Oxford Brookes University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Laser ablation microscopy reveals apical notch, apical dominance, and meristem regeneration dynamics in
Marchantia polymorpha, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, June 2026, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2600460123.
You can read the full text:
Resources
Contributors
The following have contributed to this page
