How Mechanical Forces Shape Plant Organs.

Plants produce organs of various shapes and sizes. While much has been learned about genetic regulation of organogenesis, the integration of mechanics in the process is also gaining attention. Here, we consider the role of forces as instructive signals in organ morphogenesis.

Paf1c defects challenge the robustness of flower meristem termination in .

Although accumulating evidence suggests that gene regulation is highly stochastic, genetic screens have successfully uncovered master developmental regulators, questioning the relationship between transcriptional noise and intrinsic robustness of development. To identify developmental modules that are more or less resilient to large-scale genetic perturbations, we used the polymerase II-associated factor 1 complex (Paf1c) mutant , which is impaired in several RNA polymerase II-dependent transcriptional processes. We found that the control of flower termination was not as robust as classically pictured.