Plant growth processes are complex, and many regulators take influence to ensure that the growth adequately follows the plant’s genomic program as well as the given environmental circumstances. Leaf growth begins in leaf primordia where cell proliferation takes place. Balanced activity of promoting and repressing factors ensures proper growth control. Researchers characterised the activity of TF GROWTH REGULATING FACTOR9 (GRF9) that negatively controls growth. A LemnaTec Scanalyzer(*) provided growth dynamics data on GRF9 overexpressing lines, grf9-mutants, and wild-type Arabidopsis plants. These data proved reduced growth in the GRF9 over-expressers and enhanced growth in the grf9-mutants. In context with histological, molecular, and biochemical data, quantitative phenotypic data give insight in the functionality of the regulation process. In case of GRF9 regulation, increased or decreased number of cells led to larger or smaller leaves, whereas cell sizes remained unchanged.

(*) the study was conducted using a precursor model of the Phenocenter

Read the full paper here: https://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgen.1007484