Plant embryogenesis: getting started Available to Purchase

Plants, like animals, get their start during embryogenesis. Plants,however, only pattern a basic body plan during embryogenesis, with their adult body forms bearing very little resemblance to the embryo. Given this diversity in postembryonic development, it is remarkable that plant embryos from a wide range of species go through very similar stages of development, many with stereotyped, almost invariant cell division patterns. It is therefore tempting for plant embryologists to explore the underlying molecular mechanisms of this patterning in many different types of plants. Adding to this temptation is the fact that genomic information for a multitude of experimentally tractable plants is now available at the click of a mouse. But how does one even begin to grow all of these plants, much less isolate their embryos? Editors María Suárez and Peter Bozhkov attempt to answer these questions by compiling protocols on Arabidopsis, maize, barley and spruce in the...