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A continuous growth model for plant tissue

Accepted version
Peer-reviewed

Type

Article

Change log

Authors

Bozorg, B 
Krupinski, P 
Jönsson, H 

Abstract

Morphogenesis in plants and animals involves large irreversible deformations. In plants, the response of the cell wall material to internal and external forces is determined by its mechanical properties. An appropriate model for plant tissue growth must include key features such as anisotropic and heterogeneous elasticity and cell dependent evaluation of mechanical variables such as turgor pressure, stress and strain. In addition, a growth model needs to cope with cell divisions as a necessary part of the growth process. Here we develop such a growth model, which is capable of employing not only mechanical signals but also morphogen signals for regulating growth. The model is based on a continuous equation for updating the resting configuration of the tissue. Simultaneously, material properties can be updated at a different time scale. We test the stability of our model by measuring convergence of growth results for a tissue under the same mechanical and material conditions but with different spatial discretization. The model is able to maintain a strain field in the tissue during re-meshing, which is of particular importance for modeling cell division. We confirm the accuracy of our estimations in two and three-dimensional simulations, and show that residual stresses are less prominent if strain or stress is included as input signal to growth. The approach results in a model implementation that can be used to compare different growth hypotheses, while keeping residual stresses and other mechanical variables updated and available for feeding back to the growth and material properties.

Description

Keywords

plant, growth, mechanics, modeling

Journal Title

Physical Biology

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

1478-3967
1478-3975

Volume Title

13

Publisher

Institute of Physics
Sponsorship
Gatsby Charitable Foundation (GAT3395/PR4)
This work was supported by the Swedish Research Council (VR2013:4632), the Gatsby Charitable Foundation (GAT3395/PR4), and the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation via project ShapeSystems (KAW2012.0050).