Investigation of the role of cell-cell interactions in division plane determination during maize leaf development through mosaic analysis of the tangled mutation

Most plant cells divide in planes that can be predicted from their shapes according to simple geometrical rules, but the division planes of some cells appear to be influenced by extracellular cues. In the maize leaf, some cells divide in orientations not predicted by their shapes, raising the possibility that cell-cell communication plays a role in division plane determination in this tissue. We investigated this possibility through mosaic analysis of the tangled (tan) mutation, which causes a high frequency of cells in all tissue layers to divide in abnormal orientations. Clonal sectors of tan mutant tissue marked by a closely linked albino mutation were examined to determine the phenotypes of cells near sector boundaries. We found that tan mutant cells always showed the mutant phenotype regardless of their proximity to wild-type cells, demonstrating that the wild-type Tan gene acts cell-autonomously in both lateral and transverse leaf dimensions to promote normally oriented divisions. However, if the normal division planes of wild-type cells depend on cell-cell communication involving the products of genes other than Tan, then aberrantly dividing tan mutant cells might send abnormal signals that alter the division planes of neighboring cells. The cell-autonomy of the tan mutation allowed us to investigate this possibility by examining wild-type cells near the boundaries of tan mutant sectors for evidence of aberrantly oriented divisions. We found that wild-type cells near tan mutant cells did not divide differently from other wild-type cells. These observations argue against the idea that the division planes of proliferatively dividing maize leaf epidermal cells are governed by short-range communication with their nearest neighbors.