Full article issued by the ARC Centre of Excellence for Translational Photosynthesis.
A team of Australian and US scientists, including Future Fellowship recipient, Professor Margaret Barbour from The University of Sydney, has demonstrated how three-dimensional (3D) imaging can now reproduce the inner reality of the leaf, including the dynamic carbon and water exchange processes.
Professor John Evans, a Chief Investigator at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Translational Photosynthesis, based at the Research School of Biology at The Australian National University, said that although leaves and plant cells are three dimensional, plant biologists use highly simplified 1D or 2D models, evading the difficult, confounding and beautiful 3D reality.
But the field of plant science is now in the process of being profoundly transformed by new imaging and modelling technologies that are allowing scientists to peer inside the leaf with a clarity and resolution inconceivable a generation ago. The researchers predict that using a collaborative approach, they will be able to answer, within the next decade, outstanding questions about how the 3D special arrangement of organelles, cells and tissues affects photosynthesis and transpiration.