IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/nat/nature/v421y2003i6926d10.1038_nature01444.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Water transport in plants obeys Murray's law

Author

Listed:
  • Katherine A. McCulloh

    (University of Utah)

  • John S. Sperry

    (University of Utah)

  • Frederick R. Adler

    (University of Utah)

Abstract

The optimal water transport system in plants should maximize hydraulic conductance (which is proportional to photosynthesis1,2,3,4,5) for a given investment in transport tissue. To investigate how this optimum may be achieved, we have performed computer simulations of the hydraulic conductance of a branched transport system. Here we show that the optimum network is not achieved by the commonly assumed pipe model of plant form6,7,8, or its antecedent, da Vinci's rule9,10. In these representations, the number and area of xylem conduits is constant at every branch rank. Instead, the optimum network has a minimum number of wide conduits at the base that feed an increasing number of narrower conduits distally. This follows from the application of Murray's law, which predicts the optimal taper of blood vessels in the cardiovascular system11. Our measurements of plant xylem indicate that these conduits conform to the Murray's law optimum as long as they do not function additionally as supports for the plant body.

Suggested Citation

  • Katherine A. McCulloh & John S. Sperry & Frederick R. Adler, 2003. "Water transport in plants obeys Murray's law," Nature, Nature, vol. 421(6926), pages 939-942, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:nat:nature:v:421:y:2003:i:6926:d:10.1038_nature01444
    DOI: 10.1038/nature01444
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/nature01444
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1038/nature01444?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Kannan Badri Narayanan & Rakesh Bhaskar & Hyunjin Kim & Sung Soo Han, 2023. "In Vitro Cytocompatibility Assessment of Novel 3D Chitin/Glucan- and Cellulose-Based Decellularized Scaffolds for Skin Tissue Engineering," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(21), pages 1-16, November.
    2. Fan Xu & Zeng Zhou & Sergio Fagherazzi & Andrea D’Alpaos & Ian Townend & Kun Zhao & Weiming Xie & Leicheng Guo & Xianye Wang & Zhong Peng & Zhicheng Yang & Chunpeng Chen & Guangcheng Cheng & Yuan Xu &, 2024. "Anomalous scaling of branching tidal networks in global coastal wetlands and mudflats," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 15(1), pages 1-11, December.
    3. Siddharth Patwardhan & Marc Barthelemy & Şirag Erkol & Santo Fortunato & Filippo Radicchi, 2024. "Symmetry breaking in optimal transport networks," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 15(1), pages 1-9, December.
    4. Binghan Zhou & Qian Cheng & Zhuo Chen & Zesheng Chen & Dongfang Liang & Eric Anthony Munro & Guolin Yun & Yoshiki Kawai & Jinrui Chen & Tynee Bhowmick & Karthick Kannan Padmanathan & Luigi Giuseppe Oc, 2024. "Universal Murray’s law for optimised fluid transport in synthetic structures," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 15(1), pages 1-11, December.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nat:nature:v:421:y:2003:i:6926:d:10.1038_nature01444. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.nature.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.