An overview of stomatal development in Arabidopsis thaliana Plant leaves develop in an approximate tip-to-base gradient, with cell division prevalent at the base of the leaf and differentiation

The plant stomatal lineage manifests features common to many developmental contexts: precursor cells are chosen from an initially equivalent field of cells, undergo asymmetric and selfrenewing divisions, communicate among themselves and respond to information from a distance. As we review here, the experimental accessibility of these epidermal lineages, particularly in Arabidopsis, has made stomata a conceptual and technical framework for the study of cell fate, stem cells, and cell polarity in plants.