Speaker
Description
The placement of stomata on the leaf surface is regulated by a number of things: coordinated asymmetric cellular division, genetic regulation, and distribution of extracellular signalling molecules.
It has been noted that the number of stomata per non-stomatal epidermal cell can vary between plants which have the same spatial distribution of stomata, which suggests that in some circumstances one method of maintaining stomatal placement (increased cell division, increased cell expansion, increased recruitment of cells to the stomatal fate) may be optimal over another.
Perhaps the reason for this difference in stomatal placement regulation is due to difference in the energetic costs to the plant of each of these methods. Using a combination of experimental and mathematical biology, the relationship between energetic cost and stomatal placement in the model organism Arabidopsis thaliana is being investigated.
