Abstract
Plant cells surrounded with rigid cell walls cannot move during development. Cell shape plays an important role for organ shaping and depends on the directions of cell elongation. However, the genetic regulation of anisotropic cell expansion is not well known.
We isolated an Arabidopsis mutant, itosugi (itg), defective in elongation of hypocotyls and roots. Cytological analyses of itg mutants revealed that longitudinal cell elongation was suppressed and that radial cell expansion was promoted in hypocotyls and roots. ITG:GFP fusion protein was localized around the cell periphery. These suggest that ITG function around the cell periphery is required for anisotropic cell growth.
