Issue 8, 2011
From the journal:

Molecular BioSystems

Feedback models for polarized auxin transport: an emerging trend

Krzysztof Wabnik,abc   Willy Govaerts,c   Jiří Friml*ab  and  Jürgen Kleine-Vehn*abd  

* Corresponding authors

a Department of Plant Systems Biology, VIB, Technologiepark 927, 9052 Gent, Belgium
E-mail: jiri.friml@psb.vib-ugent.be
Fax: +32 9 3313809
Tel: +32 9 3313800

b Department of Plant Biotechnology and Genetics, Ghent University, Technologiepark 927, 9052 Gent, Belgium

c Department of Applied Mathematics and Computer Science, Ghent University, Krijgslaan 281, 9000 Gent, Belgium

d Department of Applied Genetics and Cell Biology, University of Applied Life Sciences and Natural Resources (BOKU), 1190 Vienna, Austria
E-mail: juergen.kleine-vehn@boku.ac.at

Abstract

The phytohormone auxin is vital to plant growth and development. A unique property of auxin among all other plant hormones is its cell-to-cell polar transport that requires activity of polarly localized PIN-FORMED (PIN) auxin efflux transporters. Despite the substantial molecular insight into the cellular PIN polarization, the mechanistic understanding for developmentally and environmentally regulated PIN polarization is scarce. The long-standing belief that auxin modulates its own transport by means of a positive feedback mechanism has inspired both experimentalists and theoreticians for more than two decades. Recently, theoretical models for auxin-dependent patterning in plants include the feedback between auxin transport and the PIN protein localization. These computer models aid to assess the complexity of plant development by testing and predicting plausible scenarios for various developmental processes that occur in planta. Although the majority of these models rely on purely heuristic principles, the most recent mechanistic models tentatively integrate biologically testable components into known cellular processes that underlie the PIN polarity regulation. The existing and emerging computational approaches to describe PIN polarization are presented and discussed in the light of recent experimental data on the PIN polar targeting.

Graphical abstract: Feedback models for polarized auxin transport: an emerging trend

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Article information

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1039/C1MB05109A
Article type
Review Article
Submitted
18 Mar 2011
Accepted
20 May 2011
First published
10 Jun 2011

Mol. BioSyst., 2011,7, 2352-2359

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Feedback models for polarized auxin transport: an emerging trend

K. Wabnik, W. Govaerts, J. Friml and J. Kleine-Vehn, Mol. BioSyst., 2011, 7, 2352 DOI: 10.1039/C1MB05109A

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