ArticleCurrent biology : CB2016
Patterns of Stem Cell Divisions Contribute to Plant Longevity.
Article in Current biology : CB, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 76 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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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
76 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- A multiscale growth atlas of Arabidopsis: linking cell dynamics to organ development.The New phytologist · 2026Pooled it
- Somatic selection shapes mutation accumulation in Citrus sinensis.The Plant cell · 2026Article
- Mosaic Accumulation of Somatic Genetic Variation and Estimates of Age in the Long-Lived Reef-Building Coral Acropora palmata.Molecular ecology · 2026Article
- Single-nucleus transcriptomics resolves multiple fate dynamics between inflorescence meristem and primary stem.Science advances · 2026Article
- Longevity in plants impacts phylogenetic and population dynamics.The New phytologist · 2026Article
- Cell cycle in plant development and reprogramming.Development (Cambridge, England) · 2026Review
- A distributive germline restricts the spread of new mutations.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Branching architecture limits the number of fixed somatic mutations in trees.G3 (Bethesda, Md.) · 2025Article
- Accelerated growth increases the somatic epimutation rate in trees.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Minimizing detection bias of somatic mutations in a highly heterozygous oak genome.G3 (Bethesda, Md.) · 2025Article
- Somatic Evolution of Stem Cell Mutations in Long-Lived Plants.Molecular biology and evolution · 2025Article
- Mosaic of somatic mutations in one of Earth's largest organisms, Pando.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Cytoplasmic inheritance: The transmission of plastid and mitochondrial genomes across cells and generations.Plant physiology · 2025Review
- Thidiazuron Enhances Strawberry Shoot Multiplication by Regulating Hormone Signal Transduction Pathways.International journal of molecular sciences · 2025Article
- Glutathione accelerates the cell cycle and cellular reprogramming in plant regeneration.Developmental cell · 2025Article
- Response of Pedunculate Oak (Plants (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Review
- Time-lapse confocal imaging helps to reveal a secret behind gynoecium development.Quantitative plant biology · 2025Article
- miR394 and LCR cooperate with TPL to regulate AM initiation.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Glutathione accelerates the cell cycle and cellular reprogramming in plant regeneration.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2024Article
- Heritable gene editing in tomato through viral delivery of isopentenyl transferase and single-guide RNAs to latent axillary meristematic cells.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
16 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The lifespan of plants ranges from a few weeks in annuals to thousands of years in trees. It is hard to explain such extreme longevity considering that DNA replication errors inevitably cause mutations. Without purging through meiotic recombination, the accumulation of somatic mutations will eventually result in mutational meltdown, a phenomenon known as Muller's ratchet. Nevertheless, the lifespan of trees is limited more often by incidental disease or structural damage than by genetic aging. The key determinants of tree architecture are the axillary meristems, which form in the axils of leaves and grow out to form branches. The number of branches is low in annual plants, but in perennial plants iterative branching can result in thousands of terminal branches. Here, we use stem cell ablation and quantitative cell-lineage analysis to show that axillary meristems are set aside early, analogous to the metazoan germline. While neighboring cells divide vigorously, axillary meristem precursors maintain a quiescent state, with only 7-9 cell divisions occurring between the apical and axillary meristem. During iterative branching, the number of branches increases exponentially, while the number of cell divisions increases linearly. Moreover, computational modeling shows that stem cell arrangement and positioning of axillary meristems distribute somatic mutations around the main shoot, preventing their fixation and maximizing genetic heterogeneity. These features slow down Muller's ratchet and thereby extend lifespan.
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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.