ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2018
Gravisensors in plant cells behave like an active granular liquid.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 20 papers.
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Who cites it
20 citing papers in PubMed, 81 citations in OpenAlex.
- Seeds accelerate germination at beneficial planting depths by sensing the sound of rain.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Microfluidic Single-Cell Study onPlants (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Understanding the role of starch sheath layer in graviception of Alternanthera philoxeroides: a biophysical and microscopical study.Journal of plant research · 2023Article
- Chloroplasts in plant cells show active glassy behavior under low-light conditions.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- Gravity sensing and responses in the coordination of the shoot gravitropic setpoint angle.The New phytologist · 2022Review
- Active matter in space.NPJ microgravity · 2022Review
- A mechano-sensing mechanism for waving in plant roots.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- New insights and opportunities from taking a biomechanical perspective on plant ecology.Journal of experimental botany · 2022Article
- Mechanosensing, from forces to structures.Frontiers in plant science · 2022Review
- Microfluidics-Based Bioassays and Imaging of Plant Cells.Plant & cell physiology · 2021Review
- Wood and the Activity of Dead Tissue.Advanced materials (Deerfield Beach, Fla.) · 2021Review
- Article
- An Integrative Model of Plant Gravitropism Linking Statoliths Position and Auxin Transport.Frontiers in plant science · 2021Article
- Micromanipulation of amyloplasts with optical tweezers inPlant biotechnology (Tokyo, Japan) · 2020Article
- Gravity Signaling in Flowering Plant Roots.Plants (Basel, Switzerland) · 2020Review
- Settling for Less: Do Statoliths Modulate Gravity Perception?Plants (Basel, Switzerland) · 2020Article
- Activity-controlled annealing of colloidal monolayers.Nature communications · 2019Article
- Revealing the hierarchy of processes and time-scales that control the tropic response of shoots to gravi-stimulations.Journal of experimental botany · 2019Article
- Design of a comprehensive microfluidic and microscopic toolbox for the ultra-wide spatio-temporal study of plant protoplasts development and physiology.Plant methods · 2019Article
- The Role of the Primary Cell Wall in Plant Morphogenesis.International journal of molecular sciences · 2018Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Plants are able to sense and respond to minute tilt from the vertical direction of the gravity, which is key to maintain their upright posture during development. However, gravisensing in plants relies on a peculiar sensor made of microsize starch-filled grains (statoliths) that sediment and form tiny granular piles at the bottom of the cell. How such a sensor can detect inclination is unclear, as granular materials like sand are known to display flow threshold and finite avalanche angle due to friction and interparticle jamming. Here, we address this issue by combining direct visualization of statolith avalanches in plant cells and experiments in biomimetic cells made of microfluidic cavities filled with a suspension of heavy Brownian particles. We show that, despite their granular nature, statoliths move and respond to the weakest angle, as a liquid clinometer would do. Comparison between the biological and biomimetic systems reveals that this liquid-like behavior comes from the cell activity, which agitates statoliths with an apparent temperature one order of magnitude larger than actual temperature. Our results shed light on the key role of active fluctuations of statoliths for explaining the remarkable sensitivity of plants to inclination. Our study also provides support to a recent scenario of gravity perception in plants, by bridging the active granular rheology of statoliths at the microscopic level to the macroscopic gravitropic response of the plant.
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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.