Carnivorous plants have strange-shaped leaves, and they can grow on nutrient-poor environments by trapping and eating small animals. Charles Darwin, often called “the father of evolution”, was also interested in carnivorous plants, and he wrote a book titled "Insectivorous Plants" published in 1875. Since then a lot of researches have been done, but how such strange-shaped leaves were altered during evolution remained unknown.

 A research team in Japan has revealed how carnivorous pitcher leaves are formed in Sarracenia purpurea, a carnivorous plant native to North America. They thoroughly examined the process of pitcher leaf development by scanning electron microscopy, gene expression analyses, cell division pattern analyses, and a mathematical reconstruction of pitcher morphogenesis. They showed that a tissue-specific regulation of oriented cell division is the key factor for pitcher development. A computational modeling of leaf morphogenesis also supports these results. Their findings were published in Nature Communications on the 16th of March 2015.

Professor Mitsuyasu Hasebe, Mr. Kenji Fukushima, Dr. Hironori Fujita, and Professor Masayoshi Kawaguchi (from left to right).