title: The Kinematics of Plant Nutation Reveals a Simple Relation between Curvature and the Orientation of Differential Growth.
abstract: Nutation is an oscillatory movement that plants display during their development. Despite its ubiquity among plants movements, the relation between the observed movement and the underlying biological mechanisms remains unclear. Here we show that the kinematics of the full organ in 3D give a simple picture of plant nutation, where the orientation of the curvature along the main axis of the organ aligns with the direction of maximal differential growth. Within this framework we reexamine the validity of widely used experimental measurements of the apical tip as markers of growth dynamics. We show that though this relation is correct under certain conditions, it does not generally hold, and is not sufficient to uncover the specific role of each mechanism. As an example we re-interpret previously measured experimental observations using our model.
authors.affiliation: Department of Collective Behaviour, Max Planck Institute for Ornithology and Department of Biology, University of Konstanz, Konstanz, Germany.
authors.forename: Renaud
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Bastien
authors.affiliation: John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States of America.
authors.forename: Yasmine
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Meroz
mesh_terms: D001696:Biomechanical Phenomena / Q000502:physiology*; D019295:Computational Biology; D008954:Models, Biological; D009068:Movement / Q000502:physiology*; D063245:Plant Development / Q000502:physiology*