植物生理

The field of Arabidopsis flower development began in the early 1980s with the initial description of several mutants including apetala1, apetala2, and agamous that altered floral organ identity (Koornneef and van der Veen, Theor Appl Genet 58:257–263, 1980; Koornneef et al., J Hered 74:265– ...

The shoot apical and floral meristems (SAM and FM, respectively) of Arabidopsis thaliana contain reservoirs of self-renewing stem cells that function as sources of progenitor cells for organ formation during development. The primary SAM produces all of the aerial structures of the adult ...

The link between gene regulation/function and organ shape (morphogenesis) is poorly understood and remains one of the major issues in developmental biology. Petals are attractive model organs for studying organogenesis mainly because they have a simple laminar structure with a sma ...

Major advances have been made in recent years in our understanding of anther development through a combination of genetic studies, cell biological technologies, biochemical analysis, microarray and high-throughput sequencing-based approaches. In this chapter, we summarize ...

Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) allows the morphological characterization of the surface features of floral and inflorescence structures in a manner that retains the topography or three-dimensional appearance of the structure. Even at relatively low magnification leve ...

Ovules are the major female reproductive organs in higher plants. Furthermore, ovules of Arabidopsis thaliana are successfully used as model system to study plant organogenesis. Here we describe two microscopic techniques to analyze ovule development in Arabidopsis. Both methods ...

Cellular context can be crucial when studying developmental processes as well as responses to environmental variation. Several different tools have been developed in recent years to isolate specific tissues or cell types. Laser-assisted microdissection (LAM) allows for the isol ...

The development of a multicellular organism is accompanied by cell differentiation. In fact, many biological processes have cell specificity, such that distinct cell types respond differently to endogenous or environmental cues. To obtain cell-specific gene expression profi ...

The accumulation of radioactively labelled compounds in cells is frequently used for the determination of activities of various transport systems located at the plasma membrane, including the system for carrier-mediated transport of plant hormone auxin. The measurements of aux ...

Exogenous application of biologically important molecules for plant growth promotion and/or regulation is very common both in plant research and horticulture. Plant hormones such as auxins and cytokinins are classes of compounds which are often applied exogenously. Neverthel ...

Plant cell walls define cell shape during development and are composed of interlaced carbohydrate and protein networks. Fluorescent dyes have long been used to label plant cell walls, enabling optical microscopy-based interrogation of cell wall structure and composition. Howeve ...

Chemical genetics is a scientific strategy that utilizes bioactive small molecules as experimental tools to dissect biological processes. Bioactive compounds occurring in nature represent an enormous diversity of structures that potentially can be used as activators or inhi ...

Confocal laser scanning microscopy is a useful nondestructive approach for the visualization of fluorescent reporters in planta. Samples are usually placed between a slide and a cover slip which, although suited to single time-point imaging, does not allow long-term observation. Her ...

High-throughput small molecule screenings in model plants are of great value to identify compounds that interfere with plant developmental processes. In academic research, the plant Arabidopsis thaliana is the most commonly used model organism for this purpose. However, compared ...

Metabolomics and chemical genomics studies can each provide unique insights into plant biology. Although a variety of analytical techniques can be used for the interrogation of plant systems, nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) provides unbiased characterization of abundant met ...

Isotope labelling experiments with stable or radioactive isotopes have long been an integral part of biological and medical research. Labelling experiments led to the discovery of new metabolic pathways and made it possible to calculate the fluxes responsible for a metabolic phenot ...

Mutant resources are indispensable for the characterization of the functions of genes. There are two types of mutants, loss-of-function and gain-of-function mutants. Recently, we have developed a novel system in plants that uses a gain-of-function approach and is named as the FOX (full-le ...

The increasing use of plant biological screens of large compound libraries to discover informative chemical probes for plant chemical genetics requires efficient methods for hit selection and advancement. Downstream target identification and validation studies with sele ...

In high-throughput screening (HTS) a robust assay is used to interrogate a large collection of small organic molecules in order to find compounds, hits, with a desired biological activity. The hits are then further explored by an iterative process where new compounds are designed, purchased, ...

Chemical genomics is a novel approach that allows for the rapid functional analysis of plant proteins, complexes, pathways, and networks. Systematic screens for bioactive small molecules causing specific subcellular phenotypes have been successfully performed in mammalian c ...