Plant Developmental Biology

Plants come in myriads of shapes and colors, and the beauty of plants has fascinated mankind for thousands of years. Long before Mendel discovered the laws of heritab- ity and Darwin developed his theory on evolution, the affection for ornamental plants led people to select alleles that establish novel plant forms. Today, plant developmental biology tries to discover the mechanisms that control the establishment of specialized cell types, tissues, and organs from the fertilized egg during a plant’s life. Although the underlying processes of cell proliferation and differentiation are similar in plants and a- mals, plants are different because their development is usually open, and its outcome is not the faithful repetition of a general plan but is strongly in?uenced by environm- tal conditions. In the last few decades, plant developmental biology has pinpointed a large number of developmental regulators and their interactions and the mechanisms that govern plant development start to emerge. In part, this progress was enabled by the advance of powerful molecular tools for a few model species, most importantly Arabidopsis. This volume of the Methods in Molecular Biology series provides a collection of protocols for many of the common experimental approaches in plant developmental bi- ogy. All chapters are written in the same format as that used in the Methods in Molecular TM Biology series. Each chapter opens with a description of the basic theory behind the method being described.

The beauty and variety of plants has fascinated mankind for thousands of years, and this fascination continues today as plant developmental biologists discover mechanisms that control the establishment of specialized cell types, tissues, and organs from the fertilized egg during a plant’s life. In Plant Developmental Biology: Methods and Protocols, expert researchers provide a collection of protocols for many of the common experimental approaches in plant developmental biology, including diverse methods that range from grafting over bimolecular fluorescence complementation to chromatin immunoprecipitation. Chapters are divided into six major parts: growth protocols, manipulation of gene activity, assaying developmental phenotypes, assaying gene activity, testing protein-protein interactions, and probing chromatin. Composed in the highly successful Methods in Molecular Biology™ series format, each chapter contains a brief introduction, step-by-step methods, a list of necessary materials, and a Notes section which shares tips on troubleshooting and avoiding known pitfalls. Comprehensive and revolutionary, Plant Developmental Biology: Methods and Protocols is an essential guide for all plant developmental geneticists, biochemists, and researchers in stress physiology and plant nutrition.