Relationship between microtubule orientation and patterns of cell expansion in developing cortical cells of Lemna minor roots

Abstract

In actively growing cortical cells in the elongation zone of Lemna minor L. roots, both longitudinal (radial and tangential) and transverse walls expand in both length and width. The longitudinal walls of the three types of cortical cells in the root (i.e. outer, middle and inner) showed the largest expansion in the longitudinal axis. In contrast, the inner cortical cells exhibited the least expansion in width, whereas the middle cortical cells displayed the largest expansion in width. Thus, the profiles of the expansion of longitudinal walls were characteristic for the three types of cortical cells. In this study, both the orientation of cortical microtubule (MT) arrays and their dynamic reorientation, and the density of cortical MTs, were documented and correlated to the patterns of cell wall expansion. Significantly, transverse arrays of cortical MTs were most prominent in the radial walls of the inner cortical cells, and least so in those of the middle cortical cells. Toward the base of roots, beyond the elongation zone, the orientation of cortical MTs shifted continuously from transverse to oblique and then to longitudinal. In this case, the rate of shift in the orientation of cortical MTs along the root axis was appreciably faster in the middle cortical cells than in the other two types of cortical cells. Interestingly, the continuous change in cortical MT orientation was not confirmed in the transverse walls which showed much smaller two-dimensional expansion than the radial walls. Additionally, the presence of fragmented or shortened cortical MTs rapidly increased concomitantly with the decrease of transversely oriented cortical MTs. This relationship was especially prominent in the transverse walls of the inner cortical cells, which displayed the least expansion among the three types of cortical cells investigated. In the root elongation zone, the density of cortical MTs in the inner cortical cells was about three times higher than that in the other two cortical cell types. These results indicate that in the early stage of cell expansion, the orientation of cortical MTs determines a preferential direction of cell expansion and both the shifting orientation and density of cortical MTs affect the magnitude of expansion in width of the cell wall.