High-Throughput 3D Phenotyping of Plant Shoot Apical Meristems From Tissue-Resolution Data.

Confocal imaging is a well-established method for investigating plant phenotypes on the tissue and organ level. However, many differences are difficult to assess by visual inspection and researchers rely extensively on manual quantification techniques and qualitative assessment. Here we present a method for quantitatively phenotyping large samples of plant tissue morphologies using triangulated isosurfaces.

Quantitative analysis of auxin sensing in leaf primordia argues against proposed role in regulating leaf dorsoventrality.

Dorsoventrality in leaves has been shown to depend on the pre-patterned expression of KANADI and HD-ZIPIII genes within the plant shoot apical meristem (SAM). However, it has also been proposed that asymmetric auxin levels within initiating leaves help establish leaf polarity, based in part on observations of the DII auxin sensor. By analyzing and quantifying the expression of the R2D2 auxin sensor, we find that there is no obvious asymmetry in auxin levels during Arabidopsis leaf development.

Homology and linkage in crossover for linear genomes of variable length.

The use of variable-length genomes in evolutionary computation has applications in optimisation when the size of the search space is unknown, and provides a unique environment to study the evolutionary dynamics of genome structure. Here, we revisit crossover for linear genomes of variable length, identifying two crucial attributes of successful recombination algorithms: the ability to retain homologous structure, and to reshuffle variant information. We introduce direct measures of these properties-homology score and linkage score-and use them to review existing crossover algorithms, as well as two novel ones.