Time to tinker with nature (Image: Raul Touzon/National Geographic Stock) Stoma and guard cells on the underside of a broad bean leaf (Image: Dennis Kunkel Microscopy/Visuals Unlimited/Corbis)
FROM blades of grass to the cup-like fly-catcher of the pitcher plant, the diversity of leaf shapes, sizes and structures is stunning. It is also incredibly useful, allowing plants to live nearly everywhere on Earth, from the deserts of the western US to the lush shores of the Amazon. Now the precise molecular switches that control the process are being unpicked.
“We are at the stage of putting together a blueprint of the genetic program controlling leaf shape,” says…
