Rewiring vascular patterning through translational control in Arabidopsis

Plant vascular systems exhibit a wide developmental spectrum, from rigid woody tissues to soft, fleshy storage tissues. We show that increasing polyamine thermospermine transport into wild-type rootstocks, together with cytokinin, reprograms xylem identity from woody to fleshy in Arabidopsis. Our findings establish thermospermine as a mobile developmental signal and suggest a strategy for engineering plant vascular architecture.