Cells from the same lineage switch from reduction to enhancement of size variability inArabidopsissepals

Organs form with remarkably consistent sizes and shapes during development, whereas a high variability in size and growth is observed at cell level. Given this contrast, it is unclear how such consistency at organ scale can emerge from cellular behavior. We examine the growth of cell lineages, or groups of cells that are the progeny of a single mother cell. At early stages of the lineage, we find that initially smaller lineages grow faster than the larger ones reducing variability in lineage size, a phenomenon we refer to as size uniformization. In contrast at later stages of the lineage, size variability is enhanced when initially larger cell lineages grow faster than the smaller ones. Our results imply that the cell lineage changes its growth pattern at a tipping point. Finally, we found that the growth heterogeneity of individual cells within a lineage is correlated with fast growth of the lineage. Consequently, fast growing lineages show greater cell growth heterogeneity, leading to uniformization in lineage size. Thus, cellular variability in growth contributes toward decreasing variability of cell lineages throughout the sepal.