Hormones, Signals and Target Cells in Plant Development

About this book

Meristematic cells in plants (as with stem cells in animals) become the many different types of cells found in a mature plant. This is achieved by a selective response to chemical signals both from neighbouring cells and distant tissues. It is these responses that shape the plant, its time of flowering, the sex of its flowers, its length of survival or progress to senescence and death. How do plants achieve this? This up-to-date treatise addresses this question using well-chosen examples to illustrate the concept of target cells. The authors discuss how each cell has the ability to discriminate between different chemical signals, determining which it will respond to and which it will ignore. The regulation of gene expression through signal perception and signal transduction is at the core of this selectivity and the Target Cell concept. This volume will serve as a valuable reference for all researchers working in the field of plant developmental biology.

Contents

Preface; 1. Introduction; 2. Hormones and signals; 3. Cell-to-cell signalling - long distance and short distance; 4. Population diversity of cell types and target identification in higher plants; 5. Flexibility of cell types and the target cell status; 6. Terminally committed cell types and the target status; 7. The mechanisms of target cell perception and response to specific signals; 8. Hormone action and the relief of repression; 9. The phenomenon of hormonal crosstalk; References.

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Biography

Daphne J. Osborne is a Visiting and Honorary Professor with the Oxford Research Unit of the Open University, where her research focuses on the hormonal control of physiological and biochemical processes in plant differentiation and development. Michael T. McManus is Associate Professor in Plant Biology at the Institute of Molecular BioSciences, Massey University, New Zealand. His research is concerned with the control of biochemical pathways in plants, including the biosynthesis of plant hormones.