Integrative Biology Laboratory, Salk Institute for Biological Studies, La Jolla, CA 92037, USA.
Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Plant Biology Laboratory, Salk Institute for Biological Studies, La Jolla, CA 92037, USA.
Curr Biol. 2017 Jul 24;27(14):2078-2088.e3. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2017.06.009. Epub 2017 Jul 6.
Plant architectures can be characterized statistically by their spatial density function, which specifies the probability of finding a branch at each location in the territory occupied by a plant. Using high-precision 3D scanning, we analyzed 557 plant shoot architectures, representing three species, grown across three to five environmental conditions, and through 20-30 developmental time points. We found two elegant properties in the spatial density functions of these architectures: all functions could be nearly modified in one direction without affecting the density in orthogonal directions (called "separability"), and all functions shared the same underlying shape, aside from stretching and compression (called "self-similarity"). Surprisingly, despite their striking visual diversity, we discovered that all architectures could be described as variations on a single underlying function: a Gaussian density function truncated at roughly two SDs. We also observed systematic variation in the spatial density functions across species, growth conditions, and time, which suggests functional specialization despite following the same general design form.
植物结构可以通过其空间密度函数进行统计描述，该函数指定了在植物占据的区域内的每个位置找到一个分支的概率。我们使用高精度的 3D 扫描，分析了 557 个植物芽结构，代表三个物种，在三到五个环境条件下生长，并通过 20-30 个发育时间点。我们发现这些结构的空间密度函数中有两个优雅的性质：所有函数都可以在一个方向上进行近乎修改，而不会影响正交方向上的密度（称为“可分离性”），并且所有函数除了拉伸和压缩之外，都具有相同的基本形状（称为“自相似性”）。令人惊讶的是，尽管它们的视觉多样性引人注目，但我们发现所有结构都可以描述为单个基本函数的变体：截断在大约两个标准差的高斯密度函数。我们还观察到，在物种、生长条件和时间上，空间密度函数存在系统变化，这表明尽管遵循相同的一般设计形式，但存在功能专业化。
