ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2015
How grow-and-switch gravitropism generates root coiling and root waving growth responses in Medicago truncatula.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
3 citing papers in PubMed, 16 citations in OpenAlex.
- RootXplorer: A computer vision-based 3D phenotyping platform for high-throughput quantification and spatio-temporal analysis of root system penetrability.Plant phenomics (Washington, D.C.) · 2025Article
- On the mechanical origins of waving, coiling and skewing inProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- ROOT PENETRATION INDEX 3, a major quantitative trait locus associated with root system penetrability in Arabidopsis.Journal of experimental botany · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Experimental studies show that plant root morphologies can vary widely from straight gravity-aligned primary roots to fractal-like root architectures. However, the opaqueness of soil makes it difficult to observe how environmental factors modulate these patterns. Here, we combine a transparent hydrogel growth medium with a custom built 3D laser scanner to directly image the morphology of Medicago truncatula primary roots. In our experiments, root growth is obstructed by an inclined plane in the growth medium. As the tilt of this rigid barrier is varied, we find Medicago transitions between randomly directed root coiling, sinusoidal root waving, and normal gravity-aligned morphologies. Although these root phenotypes appear morphologically distinct, our analysis demonstrates the divisions are less well defined, and instead, can be viewed as a 2D biased random walk that seeks the path of steepest decent along the inclined plane. Features of this growth response are remarkably similar to the widely known run-and-tumble chemotactic behavior of Escherichia coli bacteria, where biased random walks are used as optimal strategies for nutrient uptake.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.