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Ultradian Growth Oscillations in Organs: Physiological Signal or Noise?

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Rhythms in Plants

Abstract

This review examines ultradian oscillatory growth in the multicellular organs of vascular plants. My objective is to derive insight about the underlying physiological processes powering expansion. If the process of diffuse growth is inherently oscillatory, then it is reasonable to expect entrainment of these cellular oscillators across a tissue and the emergence of coherent macroscopic growth oscillations. After reviewing studies of circumnutation and linear growth, it appears that such entrainment is rare or weak. I argue that rather than reflecting the existence of an inherent oscillation in the process of diffuse growth, the regular ultradian movements of plant organs, when they occur, reflect successive responses to mechanical perturbation.

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Acknowledgments

Work in the author’s laboratory on plant morphogenesis is supported by the Division of Chemical Sciences, Geosciences, and Biosciences, Office of Basic Energy Sciences of the U.S Department of Energy through Grant DE-FG-03ER15421. I thank Jacques Dumais (Harvard University) and Darren Wells (University of Nottingham) for clarifying comments and Arthur R. Berg (University of Aberdeen) for a color version of his figure.

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  1. Biology Department, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA, 01003, USA

    Tobias I. Baskin

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Correspondence to Tobias I. Baskin .

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  1. Dipartimento di Scienze delle Produzioni Agroalimentari e dell'Ambiente, LINV–International Lab for Plant Neurobiology, University of Florence, Sesto Fiorentino, Italy

    Stefano Mancuso

  2. School of Land and Food, University of Tasmania, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia

    Sergey Shabala

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Baskin, T.I. (2015). Ultradian Growth Oscillations in Organs: Physiological Signal or Noise?. In: Mancuso, S., Shabala, S. (eds) Rhythms in Plants. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-20517-5_1

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