NEW YORK: How does a sunflower achieve its stunning disc of intersecting spirals? A computer
model has the answer. It also shows how
plants grow.
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Computer scientists from the University of Calgary have answered one of biology's enduring questions with an animated model that provides the most detailed simulation of how plants grow into recognizable shapes, reports EurekAlert website.
In the article published in this week's edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the US, Richard Smith and Przemyslaw Prusinkiewicz presented the first model to show how plants achieve phyllotaxis.
Phyllotaxis is the arrangement of lateral organs around a central axis that results in the spiral patterns seen in most plants - beginning at the molecular level.
Biologists have many theories about why phyllotaxis exists but have always wondered how it happens, Smith was quoted as saying.
This model is exciting because it proposes a mechanism that works and can be used to try and prove some of the biological theories about the growth process.Smith and Prusinkiewicz worked with the botanists in Switzerland to create a three-dimensional simulation of plant growth at the microscopic scale.
The scientists simulated cell division showing how concentrations of the fundamental plant growth hormone auxin appear at regularly spaced intervals.
This creates the striking spiral patterns of seeds observed in sunflowers, daisies and many other plants.
Other patterns, such as branching at right angles observed in lilac branching, can also be simulated using different parameter values.
The scientists said that their model would enhance biological experiments by providing a tool botanists can use to complement and interpret their traditional laboratory experiments.
It also promises to lead to accurate models of how other organisms, including animals, develop from primordial stem cells.