There is no life without communication. A heart will not beat, an eye will not see, a flower will not bloom, unless cells are exchanging information continuously. Such information comes both from the outside environment - such as light and temperature, for instance - and the inside environment - such as calcium, hormones or pressure, for example. Take a plant. A given leaf does not grow into its shape or size without the help of multiple upstream messages which have been processed, understood and performed accordingly. Thus giving the rose its petal, the cactus its needles and the fir tree its cone. A very intriguing question is how does a plant know when to tell a leaf to stop growing? In other words: how does a plant know when to tell cells to stop multiplying and expanding? Thus giving the leaf its final - and characteristic - form? The protein kinase ERECTA may provide an answer. ERECTA, or ER, seems to have a central role in relaying multiple messages to multiple pathways involved in plant development and architecture.
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