Molecular Mechanisms of Plant Development

How do molecules encoded in plant genomes coordinate growth and development to create diverse forms, structures, and tissues? How does a plant translate information about itself or its environment via gene products and regulatory networks into appropriate developmental decisions? The answers to such questions (and many more) are the domain of molecular plant development. The field has seen many exciting advances; innovative approaches, tools, technologies, and resources have all provided new insights. These advances and burgeoning data have resulted in problems solved, gaps filled, new theories developed, and an ever-wider range of species being studied at the molecular level. An up-to-date text that engagingly and accessibly communicates this science to students is much needed. Molecular Mechanisms of Plant Development fills that gap. It emphasizes the logic of regulatory interactions, highlighting recurrent modules that echo throughout the plant’s body. It covers both programmed (innate) and environmentally responsive (plastic) development, discussing data derived from a range of both crop and wild species. This comparative – and where possible evolutionary – viewpoint will help students speculate not only about various solutions to similar developmental challenges, but also about why things might have come to be as they are. This accessible, introductory, authoritative textbook to an advanced topic is aimed principally at students (from senior undergraduate to postgraduate) as well as more senior researchers seeking an introduction to the field of molecular plant development. Its engaging and thought-process driven approach will engage and be accessible to readers from a range of levels.