Description: This important volume presents authoritative reviews of current progress in plant molecular and cellular biology. Each volume contains papers on topics in areas of molecular genetics, biochemical and cell genetics, plant-micro-organism interactions, and cell biology. The reviews are concentrated on areas of rapid development, particularly where modern techniques are allowing new insights to be gained.
Description: The book opens with a general overview of vesicular traffic both in animal and plant cells. This is followed by a more detailed consideration of higher plant coated vesicles, endocytosis, exocytosis, and mechanisms of vesicle traffic and transport in cells. The biochemistry, cell biology, and molecular biology of each is considered and particular attention is given to those specialized cell systems in which vesicle traffic is of particular importance.
Description: The molecular mechanisms which determine whether the cells of a multicellular organism will live or commit suicide have become a popular field of research in biology during the last decade. Cell death research in the plant field has also been expanding rapidly in the past 5 years. This special volume of Plant Molecular Biology seeks to bring together examples of a diverse array of experimental approaches in a single volume. From the differentiation of tracheary elements in vascular plants to the more specialized cell death model of the aleurone in cereals, this volume will bring the reader up-to-date with the characterization of different plant model systems that are currently being studied. This endeavor should complement general overviews of plant cell death mechanisms that have been published elsewhere by providing more detailed information on various aspects of this field to interested graduate students and more senior biologists alike.
Description: The central thesis of this book is that Volvox and its unicellular and colonial relatives provide a wholly unrivaled opportunity to explore the proximate and ultimate causes underlying the evolution from unicellular ancestors of multicellular organisms with fully differentiated cell types. A major portion of the book is devoted to reviewing what is known about the genetic, cellular and molecular basis of development in the most extensively studied species of Volvox: V. cateri, which exhibits a complete division of labor between mortal somatic cells and immortal germ cells. However, this topic has been put in context by first considering the ecological conditions and cytological preconditions that appear to have fostered the evolution of organisms of progressively increasing size and with progressively increasing tendency to produce terminally differentiated somatic cells. The book concludes by raising the question of whether the germ-soma dichotomy may have evolved by similar or different genetic pathways in different species of Volvox.
