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Developmental biology is the study of the process by which animals and plants grow and develop. Developmental biology also encompasses the biology of regeneration, asexual reproduction, metamorphosis, and the growth and differentiation of stem cells in the adult organism.
In vascular plants, the roots are the organs of a plant that are modified to provide anchorage for the plant and take in water and nutrients into the plant body, which allows plants to grow taller and faster. They are most often below the surface of the soil, but roots can also be aerial or aerating, that is, growing up above the ground or especially above water.
Glutathione is an antioxidant in plants, animals, fungi, and some bacteria and archaea. Glutathione is capable of preventing damage to important cellular components caused by sources such as reactive oxygen species, free radicals, peroxides, lipid peroxides, and heavy metals. It is a tripeptide with a gamma peptide linkage between the carboxyl group of the glutamate side chain and cysteine. The carboxyl group of the cysteine residue is attached by normal peptide linkage to glycine.
The meristem is a type of tissue found in plants. It consists of undifferentiated cells capable of cell division. Cells in the meristem can develop into all the other tissues and organs that occur in plants. These cells continue to divide until a time when they get differentiated and then lose the ability to divide.
A pollen tube is a tubular structure produced by the male gametophyte of seed plants when it germinates. Pollen tube elongation is an integral stage in the plant life cycle. The pollen tube acts as a conduit to transport the male gamete cells from the pollen grain—either from the stigma to the ovules at the base of the pistil or directly through ovule tissue in some gymnosperms. In maize, this single cell can grow longer than 12 inches (30 cm) to traverse the length of the pistil.
Trichomes ; from Ancient Greek τρίχωμα (tríkhōma) 'hair') are fine outgrowths or appendages on plants, algae, lichens, and certain protists. They are of diverse structure and function. Examples are hairs, glandular hairs, scales, and papillae. A covering of any kind of hair on a plant is an indumentum, and the surface bearing them is said to be pubescent.
Auxins are a class of plant hormones with some morphogen-like characteristics. Auxins play a cardinal role in coordination of many growth and behavioral processes in plant life cycles and are essential for plant body development. The Dutch biologist Frits Warmolt Went first described auxins and their role in plant growth in the 1920s. Kenneth V. Thimann became the first to isolate one of these phytohormones and to determine its chemical structure as indole-3-acetic acid (IAA). Went and Thimann co-authored a book on plant hormones, Phytohormones, in 1937.
Plasmodesmata are microscopic channels which traverse the cell walls of plant cells and some algal cells, enabling transport and communication between them. Plasmodesmata evolved independently in several lineages, and species that have these structures include members of the Charophyceae, Charales, Coleochaetales and Phaeophyceae, as well as all embryophytes, better known as land plants. Unlike animal cells, almost every plant cell is surrounded by a polysaccharide cell wall. Neighbouring plant cells are therefore separated by a pair of cell walls and the intervening middle lamella, forming an extracellular domain known as the apoplast. Although cell walls are permeable to small soluble proteins and other solutes, plasmodesmata enable direct, regulated, symplastic transport of substances between cells. There are two forms of plasmodesmata: primary plasmodesmata, which are formed during cell division, and secondary plasmodesmata, which can form between mature cells.
Florigen is the hypothesized hormone-like molecule responsible for controlling and/or triggering flowering in plants. Florigen is produced in the leaves, and acts in the shoot apical meristem of buds and growing tips. It is known to be graft-transmissible, and even functions between species. Florigen has been found identical to the transcription factor FLOWERING LOCUS T (FT).
The ABC model of flower development is a scientific model of the process by which flowering plants produce a pattern of gene expression in meristems that leads to the appearance of an organ oriented towards sexual reproduction, a flower. There are three physiological developments that must occur in order for this to take place: firstly, the plant must pass from sexual immaturity into a sexually mature state ; secondly, the transformation of the apical meristem's function from a vegetative meristem into a floral meristem or inflorescence; and finally the growth of the flower's individual organs. The latter phase has been modelled using the ABC model, which aims to describe the biological basis of the process from the perspective of molecular and developmental genetics.
A primordium in embryology, is an organ or tissue in its earliest recognizable stage of development. Cells of the primordium are called primordial cells. A primordium is the simplest set of cells capable of triggering growth of the would-be organ and the initial foundation from which an organ is able to grow. In flowering plants, a floral primordium gives rise to a flower.
Lateral roots, emerging from the pericycle, extend horizontally from the primary root (radicle) and over time makeup the iconic branching pattern of root systems. They contribute to anchoring the plant securely into the soil, increasing water uptake, and facilitate the extraction of nutrients required for the growth and development of the plant. Lateral roots increase the surface area of a plant's root system and can be found in great abundance in several plant species. In some cases, lateral roots have been found to form symbiotic relationships with rhizobia (bacteria) and mycorrhizae (fungi) found in the soil, to further increase surface area and increase nutrient uptake.
Peptide signaling plays a significant role in various aspects of plant growth and development and specific receptors for various peptides have been identified as being membrane-localized receptor kinases, the largest family of receptor-like molecules in plants. Signaling peptides include members of the following protein families.
The reduction-oxidation sensitive green fluorescent protein (roGFP) is a green fluorescent protein engineered to be sensitive to changes in the local redox environment. roGFPs are used as redox-sensitive biosensors.
Primary growth in plants is growth that takes place from the tips of roots or shoots. It leads to lengthening of roots and stems and sets the stage for organ formation. It is distinguished from secondary growth that leads to widening. Plant growth takes place in well defined plant locations. Specifically, the cell division and differentiation needed for growth occurs in specialized structures called meristems. These consist of undifferentiated cells capable of cell division. Cells in the meristem can develop into all the other tissues and organs that occur in plants. These cells continue to divide until they differentiate and then lose the ability to divide. Thus, the meristems produce all the cells used for plant growth and function.
Ling Meng is a Chinese plant biologist in the Department of Plant and Microbial Biology at the University of California, Berkeley. She is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. She is best known for discovering a novel form of cellular communication in plants. Thioredoxin, while known to play an important role in biological processes such as cellular redox, is not fully understood in function. Meng's work at Berkeley has suggested that thioredoxin h9 is associated with the plasma membrane and is capable of moving from cell to cell through two important protein post-translation modifications: myristoylation and palmitoylation. She is the first to connect thioredoxin with the plasma membrane.
In molecular biology mir-396 microRNA is a short RNA molecule. MicroRNAs function to regulate the expression levels of other genes by several mechanisms.
CLE peptides are a group of peptides found in plants that are involved with cell signaling. Production is controlled by the CLE genes. Upon binding to a CLE peptide receptor in another cell, a chain reaction of events occurs, which can lead to various physiological and developmental processes. This signaling pathway is conserved in diverse land plants.
A cytokinin signaling and response regulator protein is a plant protein that is involved in a two step cytokinin signaling and response regulation pathway.
Jen Sheen is a biologist at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School who is known for her work on plant signaling networks. She is an elected member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science
References
- Piper, Sue, ed. (Spring 2001). "The Art of Teaching" (PDF). Breakthroughs. 7 (1): 11–21. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2011-05-19. Retrieved 2011-09-07.
To assure that interaction, Feldman visits all 25 lab sections during the course of his five-week botany section.
Feldman is quoted extensively in this article.
