Tissue-dependency of the impact of endoreduplication on cell size

Abstract

Following the historical finding on the important contribution of endoreduplication on cell enlargement in the epidermis of leaves and hypocotyls, sometimes people misunderstand that cell size is always proportional to ploidy level. However, it was found that the impact of tetraploidization on cell size differs among cell types. More importantly, while endoreduplication occurs also in parenchymatous cells as well as epidermis in leaves, cell size of parenchymatous cells is very uniform. Our detailed analyses showed that the impact of endoreduplication on cell size is tissue-identity-dependent. Past reports on the relationship among changes in endoreduplication, cell size and organ size should be re-examined considering the above fact.