The plant perceptron connects environment to development

• Published in: Nature (London) Vol. 543; no. 7645; pp. 337 - 345
• Main Authors: Scheres, Ben, van der Putten, Wim H.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 16.03.2017; Nature Publishing Group
• Subjects: 631/158; 631/449; Biological Evolution; Botany; Ecosystem; Environment; Environmental aspects; Environmental conditions; EPS; Flowers & plants; Gene expression; Humanities and Social Sciences; Laboratorium voor Nematologie; Laboratory of Nematology; Life history; multidisciplinary; Neural Networks (Computer); PE&RC; Perceptrons; Plant Development; Plant Developmental Biology; Plant ecology; Plant evolution; Plants - metabolism; review-article; Science; Signal Transduction; Species diversity
• ISSN: 0028-0836; 1476-4687; 1476-4687
• DOI: 10.1038/nature22010

Plants cope with the environment in a variety of ways, and ecological analyses attempt to capture this through life-history strategies or trait-based categorization. These approaches are limited because they treat the trade-off mechanisms that underlie plant responses as a black box. Approaches that involve the molecular or physiological analysis of plant responses to the environment have elucidated intricate connections between developmental and environmental signals, but in only a few well-studied model species. By considering diversity in the plant response to the environment as the adaptation of an information-processing network, new directions can be found for the study of life-history strategies, trade-offs and evolution in plants.