Root systems are a black box obscuring a comprehensive understanding of plant function,from the ecosystem scale down to the individual. In particular,a lack of knowledge about the genetic mechanisms and environmental ...Root systems are a black box obscuring a comprehensive understanding of plant function,from the ecosystem scale down to the individual. In particular,a lack of knowledge about the genetic mechanisms and environmental effects that condition root system growth hinders our ability to develop the next generation of crop plants for improved agricultural productivity and sustainability. We discuss how the methods and metrics we use to quantify root systems can affect our ability to understand them,how we can bridge knowledge gaps and accelerate the derivation of structurefunction relationships for roots,and why a detailed mechanistic understanding of root growth and function will be important for future agricultural gains.展开更多
Numerous types of biological branching networks,with varying shapes and sizes,are used to acquire and distribute resources.Here,we show that plant root and shoot architectures share a fundamental design property.We st...Numerous types of biological branching networks,with varying shapes and sizes,are used to acquire and distribute resources.Here,we show that plant root and shoot architectures share a fundamental design property.We studied the spatial density function of plant architectures,which specifies the probability of finding a branch at each location in the 3-dimensional volume occupied by the plant.We analyzed 1645 root architectures from four species and discovered that the spatial density functions of all architectures are population-similar.This means that despite their apparent visual diversity,all of the roots studied share the same basic shape,aside from stretching and compression along orthogonal directions.Moreover,the spatial density of all architectures can be described as variations on a single underlying function:a Gaussian density truncated at a boundary of roughly three standard deviations.Thus,the root density of any architecture requires only four parameters to specify:the total mass of the architecture and the standard deviations of the Gaussian in the threeðx,y,zÞgrowth directions.Plant shoot architectures also follow this design form,suggesting that two basic plant transport systems may use similar growth strategies.展开更多
基金supported by the Donald Danforth Plant Science Centerthe National Science Foundation under Award Number IIA-1355406
文摘Root systems are a black box obscuring a comprehensive understanding of plant function,from the ecosystem scale down to the individual. In particular,a lack of knowledge about the genetic mechanisms and environmental effects that condition root system growth hinders our ability to develop the next generation of crop plants for improved agricultural productivity and sustainability. We discuss how the methods and metrics we use to quantify root systems can affect our ability to understand them,how we can bridge knowledge gaps and accelerate the derivation of structurefunction relationships for roots,and why a detailed mechanistic understanding of root growth and function will be important for future agricultural gains.
基金The authors thank Zhengbin Liu for contributing unpublished data of tomato and corn root architectures.S.S.thanks Dr.and Mrs.Larry Greenfield for their generous lab support.S.N.was supported by the Pew Charitable Trusts,the National Science Foundation under award CAREER DBI-1846554,and the NIDCD of the National Institutes of Health under award number 1R01DC017695.
文摘Numerous types of biological branching networks,with varying shapes and sizes,are used to acquire and distribute resources.Here,we show that plant root and shoot architectures share a fundamental design property.We studied the spatial density function of plant architectures,which specifies the probability of finding a branch at each location in the 3-dimensional volume occupied by the plant.We analyzed 1645 root architectures from four species and discovered that the spatial density functions of all architectures are population-similar.This means that despite their apparent visual diversity,all of the roots studied share the same basic shape,aside from stretching and compression along orthogonal directions.Moreover,the spatial density of all architectures can be described as variations on a single underlying function:a Gaussian density truncated at a boundary of roughly three standard deviations.Thus,the root density of any architecture requires only four parameters to specify:the total mass of the architecture and the standard deviations of the Gaussian in the threeðx,y,zÞgrowth directions.Plant shoot architectures also follow this design form,suggesting that two basic plant transport systems may use similar growth strategies.
