Plant embryogenesis: plasticity and robustness through a 3D lens

This is a Commentary to: Tezuka, M., Kitta, T., Kumakura, H., Sato, M., Kamamoto, N., Naramoto, S., et al. (2026) 3D imaging reveals robustness and plasticity of cell division in rice early embryogenesis. Plant Cell Physiol. https://doi.org/10.1093/pcp/pcaf171. Embryogenesis is a fundamental developmental process for establishing body axes in multicellular organisms. In plants, although cells are generally known to divide along the geometrically minimum division plane (Fig. 1a; Besson and Dumais 2011), formative divisions that deviate from this default geometric rule are essential for proper body axis formation during embryogenesis. In the dicotyledonous model plant Arabidopsis thaliana, zygotes undergo dynamic changes, such as cell elongation and nuclear migration, before subsequently dividing asymmetrically to establish the apical−basal axis (Matsumoto and Ueda 2024). The smaller apical cell initially undergoes regular divisions in accordance with the geometric rule, but later performs formative periclinal divisions that lead to the establishment of the inner−outer axis (Yoshida et al. 2014). At later stages, organs such as cotyledons differentiate to give rise to a bilaterally symmetric embryo.