Local interactions shape plant cells

Plant cell expansion is usually attributed to the considerable osmotic pressure that develops within and impinges upon the cell boundary. Whereas turgor containment within expandable walls explains global expansion, the scalar nature of turgor does not directly suggest a mechanism for achieving the localized, differential growth that is responsible for the diversity of plant-cell forms. The key to achieving local growth in plant cells appears to lie not in harnessing turgor but in using it to identify weak regions in the cell boundary and thus creating discrete intracellular domains for targeting the growth machinery. Membrane-interacting phospholipases, Rho-like proteins and their interactors, an actin-modulating ARP2/3 complex with its upstream regulators, and actin-microtubule interactions play important roles in the intracellular cooperation to shape plant cells.