# Meristem fate: to terminate, or not?

## TL;DR

This review explores how plant meristems decide between sustained and finite growth, focusing on gene and hormone interactions.

## Contribution

The paper highlights the regulatory networks controlling meristem fate in angiosperms, emphasizing transcriptional and hormonal interactions.

## Key findings

- Regulatory networks involving transcriptional regulators and phytohormone gradients control meristem fate.
- Determinate structures like flowers and thorns arise from converging regulatory pathways in different species.
- Meristem plasticity underpins plant adaptability and architectural diversity.

## Abstract

Plants exhibit remarkable physiological and developmental flexibility, enabling continued organogenesis, adaptation to environmental stimuli, and underpinning a vast diversity of shoot architectures. Central to this capacity is the plasticity of plant meristems, that function as dynamic sources of stem cells and define pivotal decision points between indeterminate (sustained) and determinate (finite) growth. Understanding the regulatory networks governing meristem fate is critical for both basic plant science and practical applications in crop architecture and yield optimization. In this review, we focus on the interplay between transcriptional regulators and phytohormone gradients that govern the switch between indeterminacy and determinacy in developing shoot meristems. We explore how regulatory networks converge to produce determinate structures such as flowers and thorns in different angiosperm species.