Use it or average it: stochasticity in plant development

摘要: A process that is stochastic has a probabilistic or randomly determined outcome. At the molecular level, all processes are stochastic; but development highly reproducible, suggesting plants and other multicellular organisms have evolved mechanisms to ensure robustness (achieving correct despite environmental perturbations). Mechanisms of can be discovered through isolating mutants with increased variability in phenotype; such mutations do not necessarily change average phenotype. Surprisingly, some developmental actually exploit stochasticity as useful source variation. For example, gene expression utilized create subtle differences between identical cells initiate patterning specialized cell types. Stochasticity also used promote spatiotemporal averaging-stochasticity averaged out across space over time. Thus, often harness robust development.