Plant formins come of age: something special about cross-walls.

This article reports on the localization of Arabidopsis thaliana formins, AtFH4 and AtFH8, to cross-wall of roots, hypocotyl and shoot tissues. Here, findings from the perspective of plant cell polarity, cell wall-cytoskeleton adhesion domains, polar auxin transport, and the emerging status of these cross-walls in that they resemble neuronal and immunological synapses are discussed. This study opens avenues in the understanding of plant-specific formins as the authors report domain-specific enrichment of AtFH4 and AtFH8 at cross-walls of diverse plant organs. This raises the question as to what is specific about these cross-walls.