Abstract
Plant cell morphogenesis relies on the mechanical properties of the primary cell wall, yet it remains unclear which components predominantly regulate wall extensibility. Cotton fibers, highly elongated single cells, offer a unique system to investigate polarized cell expansion. Here, by combining atomic force microscopy and cellulose labeling, we find a basipetal gradient of cellulose microfibril density from the apex to the shank that underlies cell wall heterogeneity and directed cotton fiber elongation. Live-cell imaging shows that cellulose synthase complexes accumulate more densely toward the shank, which is guided by specific microtubule organization and is supported by genetic disruption and microtubule perturbation. A mechanical model further demonstrates that a cellulose gradient is sufficient to reshape axial strain for directional growth. Collectively, our findings provide single-cell evidence for a cellulose-dependent mechanism of directional growth, expanding our understanding of primary cell wall extensibility in plant morphogenesis and offering potential strategies to improve cotton fiber quality.
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Data availability
All data generated or analyzed during this study are included in this article and its supplementary information files. Further information and requests for resources and reagents should be directed to and will be fulfilled by the lead contact, Zhaosheng Kong (zskong@im.ac.cn). All unique reagents generated in this study are available from the lead contact upon request and with a completed material transfer agreement. Source data are provided with this paper.
Code availability
The code used for mathematical modeling and analysis is available on Code Ocean (Capsule: “Differential Cellulose Distribution Drives Polarized Growth of Cotton Fibers”, https://doi.org/10.24433/CO.0498922.v1). The GitHub repository (https://github.com/zhou-biomech/DiffCMFCottonFibers) is provided as a development mirror.
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Acknowledgements
We thank Dr. Enrico Coen (Department of Cell and Developmental Biology, John Innes Centre, UK) and Dr. Jordi Chan (Department of Cell and Developmental Biology, John Innes Centre, UK) for their insightful suggestions on plant cell wall immunolabelling. We thank Dr. Bo Liu (Department of Plant Biology, College of Biological Sciences, University of California, Davis, CA, USA) for his valuable suggestions on live-cell imaging. We thank Dr. Jin Zhou (National Center for Nanoscience and Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences) for helping with AFM sample scanning. This study was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2022YFD1200300), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 31925003 and 32100556), and the fellowship of China National Postdoctoral Program for Innovative Talents (Grant No. BX20200359). S.P. thanks the Villum Investigator (Project ID: 25915), Novo Nordisk Laureate (NNF19OC0056076), Novo Nordisk Emerging Investigator (NNF20OC0060564), and Novo Nordisk Data Science (NNF0068884) grants to S.P.
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Z.K. and G.W. designed the project. G.W., J.W. and H.Y. performed most of the experiments. J.-X.W. generated the figures in the manuscript. Y.Y., X.Z. and J.T. helped with most of sample and reagent preparation. Y.M. helped with the plant material preparation. L.Z helped with the computational modeling. G.X., Y.X. and S.P. helped with writing of the manuscript. L.Z. and Z.K. supervised the project.
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Wang, G., Wang, J., Yang, H. et al. Differential cellulose distribution drives polarized growth of cotton fibers. Nat Commun (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-71314-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-71314-1
