Plant Developmental Biology, 2010 Methods and Protocols Methods in Molecular Biology Series, Vol. 655

Plants come in myriads of shapes and colors, and the beauty of plants has fascinated mankind for thousands of years. Long before Mendel discovered the laws of heritab- ity and Darwin developed his theory on evolution, the affection for ornamental plants led people to select alleles that establish novel plant forms. Today, plant developmental biology tries to discover the mechanisms that control the establishment of specialized cell types, tissues, and organs from the fertilized egg during a plant?s life. Although the underlying processes of cell proliferation and differentiation are similar in plants and a- mals, plants are different because their development is usually open, and its outcome is not the faithful repetition of a general plan but is strongly in?uenced by environm- tal conditions. In the last few decades, plant developmental biology has pinpointed a large number of developmental regulators and their interactions and the mechanisms that govern plant development start to emerge. In part, this progress was enabled by the advance of powerful molecular tools for a few model species, most importantly Arabidopsis. This volume of the Methods in Molecular Biology series provides a collection of protocols for many of the common experimental approaches in plant developmental bi- ogy. All chapters are written in the same format as that used in the Methods in Molecular TM Biology series. Each chapter opens with a description of the basic theory behind the method being described.

Growth Protocols for Model Plants in Developmental Biology.- Grafting as a Research Tool.- Virus-Induced Gene Silencing as a Reverse Genetics Tool to Study Gene Function.- The CRE/lox System as a Tool for Developmental Studies at the Cell and Tissue Level.- Inducible Gene Expression Systems for Plants.- Trichome Development in Arabidopsis.- Phenotyping the Development of Leaf Area in Arabidopsis thaliana.- Analyzing Shoot Apical Meristem Development.- Analyzing Floral Meristem Development.- Female Gametophytic Mutants: Diagnosis and Characterization.- Pollen Tube Development.- Analysis of Root Meristem Size Development.- Phenotypic Characterization of Photomorphogenic Responses During Plant Development.- Kinematic Analysis of Cell Division and Expansion.- Flowering Time Control.- mRNA Detection by Whole Mount In Situ Hybridization (WISH) or Sectioned Tissue In Situ Hybridization (SISH) in Arabidopsis.- Immunolocalization of Proteins in Plants.- Detection of Small Non-coding RNAs.- Quantitative Real Time PCR in Plant Developmental Biology.- Luciferase and Green Fluorescent Protein Reporter Genes as Tools to Determine Protein Abundance and Intracellular Dynamics.- Fluorescence-Activated Cell Sorting in Plant Developmental Biology.- Laser Microdissection of Paraffin-Embedded Plant Tissues for Transcript Profiling.- Utilizing Bimolecular Fluorescence Complementation (BiFC) to Assay Protein–Protein Interaction in Plants.- The Split Luciferase Complementation Assay.- Co-immunoprecipitation and Protein Blots.- Probing Protein–Protein Interactions with FRET–FLIM.- Plant Chromatin Immunoprecipitation.- Immunocytological Analysis of Chromatin in Isolated Nuclei.- Bisulphite Sequencing of Plant Genomic DNA.

Provides instructions for handling of different plant model systems Offers cutting-edge methods for analyzing plant development on the phenotypic, molecular and biochemical level Includes in-depth explanations and troubleshooting advice for all methods Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras