RT Journal Article SR Electronic T1 Conformal growth of Arabidopsis leaves JF bioRxiv FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory SP 048199 DO 10.1101/048199 A1 Graeme Mitchison YR 2016 UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/04/21/048199.abstract AB I show that Arabidopsis leaf growth can be described with good precision by a conformal map, where expansion is locally isotropic (the same in all directions) but the amount of expansion can vary with position. Data obtained by tracking leaf growth over time can be reproduced with almost 90% accuracy by such a map. The growth follows a Moebius transformation, which is a type of conformal map that would arise if there were an underlying linear gradient of growth rate. From the data one can derive the parameters that describe this linear gradient and show how it changes over time. Growth according to a conformal map has the property of maintaining the flatness of a leaf.