Overview
- Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory announced the peer-reviewed findings after publication in Nature Communications.
- The Chinese money plant (Pilea peperomioides) shows a leaf layout that matches a Voronoi diagram, where space splits into regions around central points.
- In this leaf, visible hydathode pores act like the points and the looping reticulate veins trace the borders between regions.
- The authors present a “natural algorithm” in which local signals near each pore guide vein growth, rather than any explicit distance sensing.
- Associate Professor Saket Navlakha led the work with Cici Zheng and collaborator Przemysław Prusinkiewicz, linking geometry, plant biology, and computing to frame new tests of pattern formation in living systems.