Abstract

Growth is one of the most studied plant responses. At the cellular level, plant growth is driven by cell division and cell expansion. A means to quantify these two cellular processes is through kinematic analysis, a methodology that has been developed and perfected over the past decades, with in-depth descriptions of the methodology available. Unfortunately, after performing the lab work, researchers are required to perform time-consuming, repetitive and error-prone calculations. To lower the barrier towards this final step in the analysis and to aid researchers currently applying this technique, we have created leafkin, an R-package to perform all the calculations involved in the kinematic analysis of monocot leaves using only four functions. These functions support leaf elongation rate calculations, fitting of cell length profiles, extraction of fitted cell lengths and execution of kinematic equations. With the leafkin package, kinematic analysis of monocot leaves becomes more accessible than before.

Highlights

  • IntroductionGrowth is o en quantified on whole plant (e.g. dry mass) or organ (e.g. root or leaf length) level (Erickson, 1976; Poorter & Garnier, 1996)

  • Growth is o en quantified on whole plant or organ level (Erickson, 1976; Poorter & Garnier, 1996). It represents the combined result of two processes at the cellular level, that is cell division and cell expansion (Beemster et al, 2003). erefore, various studies have quantified these cellular processes, o en linking them to data from biochemical and molecular assays for a more mechanistic understanding of different growth responses (Sprangers et al, 2016). e importance of growth analysis at the cellular level is clearly demonstrated by a meta-study by Gázquez and Beemster (2017), who identified the regulation of the transition from cell division to cell expansion as the key cellular mechanism for organ size regulation

  • Monocotyledonous leaves are ideally suited for the quantification of cell division and expansion, because they are linear, steady-state growing organs. is means that, for a certain period during their development, a growth zone with a stable meristem and elongation zone size is present at the base of the leaf, resulting in an approximately constant leaf elongation rate (Muller et al, 2001; Schnyder et al, 1990)

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Summary

Introduction

Growth is o en quantified on whole plant (e.g. dry mass) or organ (e.g. root or leaf length) level (Erickson, 1976; Poorter & Garnier, 1996) It represents the combined result of two processes at the cellular level, that is cell division and cell expansion (Beemster et al, 2003). To help novices with the application of a kinematic analysis on monocotyledonous leaves and to simplify and accelerate the work of researchers already employing this technique, we developed leafkin, a simple to use R-package, which performs all required calculations using only four functions.

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