Fig. 5.

CMTs align along maximal tensile stress in plants. a Left: pattern of cortical microtubules at the shoot apical meristem (CZ: central zone, B: organ–meristem boundary, O: organ). Cell contours (red) and microtubules (green). Right: finite element model where local pattern of stress is predicted, with an emerging co-alignment of tensile stress directions (red bars) at the organ–meristem boundary domain (adapted from ref. ⁵). b Predicted pattern of mechanical stress at the shoot apical meristem (using a continuous model based on pressure vessel analogy), and matching supracellular microtubule pattern (adapted from ref. ⁵). c Pattern of cortical microtubules in light-grown hypocotyls before (left) and after (right) controlled compression along the axis of the hypocotyl (adapted from ref. ⁵²). d Correlation between tension pattern derived from adhesion defects (bright propidium staining and cracks) in the qua1 mutant in stems and basal region of dark-grown hypocotyls (left) and cortical microtubule orientation in a wild-type background (right). Microtubules are revealed by a GFP-Microtubule Binding Domain fusion (GFP-MBD) (adapted from ref. ⁵³)