2015/09/02 by Kelly M. Paton, Lisa Anderson, Lisa M. Anderson +6
Agricultural and Biological Sciences · Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Neuroscience · #FOS: Biological sciences #Light effects on plants #Photoreceptor and optogenetics research #Photosynthetic Processes and Mechanisms #Subcellular Processes (q-bio.SC) #q-bio.SC
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1509.00811
arxiv created 2015/09/02 · openalex publication_date 2015/09/02 · arxiv updated 2015/09/03 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Chloroplasts regulate their growth to optimize photosynthesis. Quantitative data shows that the ratio of total chloroplast area to mesophyll cell area is constant across different cells within a single species, and also across species. Wild-type chloroplasts exhibit little scatter around this trend; highly irregularly-shaped mutant chloroplasts exhibit more scatter. Here we propose a model motivated by a bacterial quorum-sensing model consisting of a switch-like signalling network that turns off chloroplast growth. We calculated the dependence of the location of the relevant saddle-node bifurcation on the geometry of the chloroplasts. Our model exhibits a linear trend, with linearly growing scatter dependent on chloroplast shape, consistent with the data. When modelled chloroplasts are of a shape that grows with a constant area to volume ratio (disks, cylinders) we find a linear trend with minimal scatter. Chloroplasts with area and volume that do not grow proportionally (spheres) exhibit a linear trend with additional scatter.