Modeling plant growth and pattern formation.

Plants continue to grow and generate new organs in symmetric patterns throughout their lives. This development requires an interconnected regulation of genes, hormones, and anisotropic growth, which in part is guided by environmental cues. Recently, several studies have used a combination of experiments and mathematical modeling to elucidate the mechanisms behind different growth and molecular patterns in plants. The computational models were used to investigate the often non-intuitive consequences of different hypotheses, and the in silico simulations of the models inspired further experimentation. Copyright 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.