Abstract
In land plants, the new cell wall, called the cell plate, separates a parental cell into two. The cell plate initially appears as a disc between daughter nuclei and then expands towards the cell periphery until it fuses with parental cell walls. Our goal is to understand mechanism of the cell plate expansion.
The cell plate is deposited by the phragmoplast, which contains many microtubules. Spatial control of microtubule behavior in the phragmoplast is considered to be essential for the cell plate expansion. It is believed that microtubules predominantly polymerize at the leading edge of the phragmoplast (the outer margin of the phragmoplast) and depolymerize at the region where assembly of the cell plate is completed (Gunning 1982, Jurgens 2005). We quantitatively analyzed localization of growing microtubule ends, growth direction of microtubules and microtubule lifespan in the phragmoplast during cell plate development. We will propose a new hypothesis on the mechanism of the cell plate expansion based on quantification of microtubule dynamics.
