Central limit theorem and the short-term temperature response of coleoptile and hypocotyl elongation growth

Abstract

In this contribution we deal with a new mathematical description of the response of short-term coleoptile/hypocotyl expansion growth to temperature. Although the interest of both the bio-mechanical basis of elongation growth and temperature responses has been studied in plant biology and biophysics for a long time, yet the question of the mode of actions of temperature is very relevant and still open. Here we introduce a simple idea that the normal distribution, due to the central limit theorem (CLT), is able to report on temperature-dependent elongation growth. The numerical fittings for temperature affected growth are in good agreement with empirical data. We suggest that the observation concerning a crossover effect occurring in temperature driven elongation together with CLT leads to the formulation of a hypothesis about the possible universal character of such a description, supposedly for many plant species and families. We conclude with the statement that properly constructed equations of temperature affected growth, should possibly include a specific term proportional to exp[-((T-T0)/T0)²] with T0 corresponding to the temperature of the optimum growth.