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Mechanical Integration of Plant Cells and Plants pp 241–267Cite as

Plants as Mechano-Osmotic Transducers

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Part of the book series: Signaling and Communication in Plants ((SIGCOMM,volume 9))

Abstract

Supportive function and expansion of a soft tissue are considered from the energetic perspective. The minimum of the potential energy in a cell determines the cell shape. The minimum of the potential energy in a cylindrical organ composed of turgid tissues, which differ in their elasticity moduli, predicts the occurrence of tissue stresses in the organ. The concept of turgor-driven cell wall extension is reexamined on the assumptions that (1) during stress relaxation the osmotic energy is transformed into strain energy of newly formed cell wall layers, and (2) only the outer cell wall layer undergoes the stress relaxation. This leads to an equation for a relative extension rate different from the rheological equation but also including a threshold turgor pressure. The cases of cell wall expansion that cannot be driven by turgor pressure (formation of intercalary gas spaces, expansion of convoluted anticlinal walls in leaf epidermis, expansion of cell wall invaginations in Pinus mesophyll) are described. A hypothesis is presented that in such cases the wall extension is driven by an increased swelling of the inner layer of the cell wall.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Buckling is a reversible deformation due to pure compression resulting in bending when a threshold compressive stress is surpassed.

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Dedication and Acknowledgments

The author dedicates this chapter to Andreas Sievers.

The author thanks Dorota Kwiatkowska for helpful discussion and comments, and Agata Burian and Anna Staroń for providing copies of literature issues.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biophysics and Morphogenesis of Plants, University of Silesia, Jagiellońska 28, 40-032, Katowice, Poland

    Zygmunt Hejnowicz

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  1. Zygmunt Hejnowicz
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Correspondence to Zygmunt Hejnowicz .

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  1. Dept. of Molecular and Cellular Biology, Adam Mickiewicz University, ul. Miedzychodzka 5, Poznan, 60-371, Poland

    Przemyslaw Wojtaszek

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Hejnowicz, Z. (2011). Plants as Mechano-Osmotic Transducers. In: Wojtaszek, P. (eds) Mechanical Integration of Plant Cells and Plants. Signaling and Communication in Plants, vol 9. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-19091-9_10

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