New insight into how plant cells divide
Every time a stem cell divides, one daughter cell remains a stem cell while the other takes off on its own developmental journey. But both daughter cells require specific and different cellular materials to fulfill their destinies. Animal stem cells use the cytoskeleton—a transient network of structural tubules—to physically pull the correct materials from the parent cell into each daughter cell during the split. Plants also have stem cells that need to distribute different materials to each of their daughters, but earlier studies seem to have ruled out an "animal-style" cytoskeleton to accomplish this task. And what plants used instead remained elusive—until now.