Leaf growth is conformal

Phys Biol. 2016 Sep 6;13(5):05LT01. doi: 10.1088/1478-3975/13/5/05LT01.

Abstract

Growth pattern dynamics lie at the heart of morphogenesis. Here, we investigate the growth of plant leaves. We compute the conformal transformation that maps the contour of a leaf at a given stage onto the contour of the same leaf at a later stage. Based on the mapping we predict the local displacement field in the leaf blade and find it to agree with the experimentally measured displacement field to 92%. This approach is applicable to any two-dimensional system with locally isotropic growth, enabling the deduction of the whole growth field just from observation of the tissue contour.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
  • Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.

MeSH terms

  • Models, Biological
  • Morphogenesis*
  • Plant Leaves / growth & development*