Division of shape-standardized tobacco cells reveals a limit to the occurrence of single-criterion-based selection of the plane of symmetric division.

The plane of symmetric plant cell division tends to be selected so that the new cross-wall halving the cell volume has the least possible area, and several cases of such selection are best represented by a recently formulated model which promotes the view that the strength of the least area tendency is the only criterion for selecting the plane. To test this model, the present study examined the divisions of two types of shape-standardized tobacco BY-2 cell, oblate-spheroidal (os) cells prepared from protoplasts and spheri-cylindrical (sc) cells with unusual double-wall structures prepared from plasmolyzed cells. Measurements of cell shape parameters and division angles revealed that both cell types most frequently divide nearly along their short axes. While os cells did not exhibit any other division angle bias, sc cell division was characterized by another bias which made the frequency of longitudinal divisions secondarily high. The geometry of sc cells barely allows the longitudinal cross-walls to have locally minimum areas. Nevertheless, a comparison of detected and hypothetical standard divisions indicates that the frequency of longitudinal sc cell division can be significantly higher than that predicted when the longitudinal cross-walls are assumed to have locally minimum areas smaller than their original areas. These results suggest that, even in isolated plant cell types, the strength of the least area tendency is not the only criterion for selecting the division plane. The possibility that there is another basic, though often hidden, criterion is discussed.