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DEVELOPMENT AND HORMONE ACTION

Loss of Stability: A New Look at the Physics of Cell Wall Behavior during Plant Cell Growth^[W],[OA]

Department of Plant Biology, University of Vermont, Burlington, Vermont 05405 (C.W., P.M.L.); and Department of Physics, Guangxi National University, Nanning 530006, China (C.W.)

In this article we investigate aspects of turgor-driven plant cell growth within the framework of a model derived from the Eulerian concept of instability. In particular we explore the relationship between cell geometry and cell turgor pressure by extending loss of stability theory to encompass cylindrical cells. Beginning with an analysis of the three-dimensional stress and strain of a cylindrical pressure vessel, we demonstrate that loss of stability is the inevitable result of gradually increasing internal pressure in a cylindrical cell. The turgor pressure predictions based on this model differ from the more traditional viscoelastic or creep-based models in that they incorporate both cell geometry and wall mechanical properties in a single term. To confirm our predicted working turgor pressures, we obtained wall dimensions, elastic moduli, and turgor pressures of sequential internodal cells of intact Chara corallina plants by direct measurement. The results show that turgor pressure predictions based on loss of stability theory fall within the expected physiological range of turgor pressures for this plant. We also studied the effect of varying wall Poisson's ratio on extension growth in living cells, showing that while increasing elastic modulus has an understandably negative effect on wall expansion, increasing Poisson's ratio would be expected to accelerate wall expansion.

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www.plantphysiol.org/cgi/doi/10.1104/pp.107.101964

^* Corresponding author; e-mail chunfang.wei{at}uvm.edu.

Received May 8, 2007; accepted September 16, 2007; published September 28, 2007.

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