Genetic Discovery Shows How Plants Organize Their Shape

A gene that helps plants decide when and where to sprout new branches has been discovered. The find may give rise to less wasteful crops and more beautiful bushes. "Branching has a profound effect on the architecture of a plant," says Ottoline Leyser of the University of York, UK, who is one of the researchers behind the study. The simple yes/no decision of whether to sprout a side shoot essentially dictates the plant's ultimate shape. Leyser and her colleagues identified the gene, called MAX3, in Arabidopsis thaliana, a weed commonly studied by geneticists. Plants that sport unusually high numbers of side shoots tend to have mutations in this gene, the researchers report in Current Biology.