It has long been accepted that differential radial thickening of guard cells plays an important role in the turgor-driven shape changes required for stomatal pore opening to occur [1-4]. This textbook description derives from an original interpretation of structure rather than measurement of mechanical properties. Here we show, using atomic force microscopy, that although mature guard cells dis...

Guard cells are specialized cells located at the leaf surface delimiting pores which control gas exchanges between the plant and the atmosphere. To optimize the CO2 uptake necessary for photosynthesis while minimizing water loss, guard cells integrate environmental signals to adjust stomatal aperture. The size of the stomatal pore is regulated by movements of the guard cells driven by variation...

The guard zone computation problem claims utmost importance in VLSI layout design, where the circuit components (or the functional units/modules or groups/blocks of different sub-circuits) that may be viewed as a set of polygonal regions on a two-dimensional plane, are not supposed to be placed much closer to each other in order to avoid electrical (parasitic) effects among them. Each (group of...

Our current understanding of guard cell signaling pathways is derived from studies in a small number of model species. The ability to study stomatal responses in isolated epidermis has been an important factor in elucidating the mechanisms by which the stomata of these species respond to environmental stresses. However, such approaches have rarely been applied to study guard cell signaling in t...

Inward-rectifying K+ (K+in) channels in the guard cell plasma membrane have been suggested to function as a major pathway for K+ influx into guard cells during stomatal opening. When K+in channels were blocked with external Cs+ in wild-type Arabidopsis guard cells, light-induced stomatal opening was reduced. Transgenic Arabidopsis plants were generated that expressed a mutant of the guard cell ...

Inward-rectifying K+ (K+in) channels in the guard cell plasma membrane have been suggested to function as a major pathway for K+ influx into guard cells during stomatal opening. When K+, channels were blocked with external Cs+ in wild-type Arabidopsis guard cells, light-induced stomatal opening was reduced. Transgenic Arabidopsis plants were generated that expressed a mutant of the guard cell K...

Stomatal pores in leaves enable plants to regulate the exchange of gases with their environment. Variations of the pore aperture are mediated by controlled changes of potassium salt concentrations in the surrounding guard cells. The voltage-dependent gating of K(+)-selective channels in the plasma membrane (plasmalemma) of cell-wall-free guard cells (protoplasts) was studied at the molecular le...

In responses to a number of environmental stimuli, changes of cytoplasmic [Ca(2+)](cyt) in stomatal guard cells play important roles in regulation of stomatal movements. In this study, the osmo-sensitive and stretch-activated (SA) Ca(2+) channels in the plasma membrane of Vicia faba guard cells are identified, and their regulation by osmotic changes and actin dynamics are characterized. The ide...

A new code for the design of the guard fence performances was implemented and issued in April 1999 in Japan. The prescribed performances of the new code are: i) prevention of derail, ii) safety of occupant, iii) leading vehicles to road, and iv) prevention of spreading out the broken pieces. In the new code, the full-scale experiment for checking the performances of guard fences is required in ...

—Usually, for the design of UWB systems, the symbol duration is chosen larger than the delay of the channel impulse response, in order to avoid the ISI (inter symbol interference). However, this approach does not maximize the system capacity. An adaptation of the guard time (GT) is a flexible mean of exploiting system resources efficiently in a multi-path fading environment. The optimal guard ...