Perspective: Periodic lateral root priming: What makes it tick

The very earliest step in lateral root formation is “priming”, a still-elusive process that establishes a subset of cells as competent to form lateral roots. In this Perspective, ten Tusscher and Laskowski review  evidence for priming, which involves oscillations of auxin level or responsiveness and oscillations of gene expression. The authors describe several models for the origin of these oscillations, including cell-autonomous clocks, Turing-type patterning, and tissue-level alterations in auxin level. The authors conclude by presenting a new hypothesis, “in which self-organized fluctuations in auxin level both result in and arise from changes in auxin transporters.” Plant Cell 10.1105/tpc.16.00638