Imaging and modeling growth and morphogenesis in plants

The growth of tissues, organs or organisms derives from the coordinated activities of complex genetic regulatory networks. In addition to its molecular underpinnings, growth also generally involves significant changes in geometry. To fully understand morphogenesis in its molecular and physical contexts the development of an interdisciplinary approach is required associating biology, mathematics, and physics, which held together by computer science. Growth quantitation and digital simulations have been developed to generate and test the plausibilities of complex hypotheses. Increasingly, real-time live imaging protocols are becoming an essential part of this process. In this review, I discuss the evolution of imaging techniques in plant developmental biology and briefly examine the different ways in which these studies have shed light on growth and morphogenesis in plants.

► Shaping tissues requires irreversible deformation within a tissue over time. ► This is quantified with three growth metrics: rate, anisotropy and direction. ► Tissue-level growth is measured by tracking visible points called landmarks. ► Cell-level growth measurements use cell shapes, sizes positions and neighborhoods. ► Modeling provides a crucial way to identify important growth parameters.