Plant Molecular Evolution, Softcover reprint of the original 1st ed. 2000

Plant molecular biology has produced an ever-increasing flood of data about genes and genomes. Evolutionary biology and systematics provides the context for synthesizing this information. This book brings together contributions from evolutionary biologists, systematists, developmental geneticists, biochemists, and others working on diverse aspects of plant biology whose work touches to varying degrees on plant molecular evolution. The book is organized in three parts, the first of which introduces broad topics in evolutionary biology and summarizes advances in plant molecular phylogenetics, with emphasis on model plant systems. The second segment presents a series of case studies of gene family evolution, while the third gives overviews of the evolution of important plant processes such as disease resistance, nodulation, hybridization, transposable elements and genome evolution, and polyploidy.

Section 1: Molecular evolution and phylogenetics: general issues.- Evolution of genes and taxa: a primer.- Examining rates and patterns of nucleotide substitution in plants.- Contributions of plant molecular systematics to studies of molecular evolution.- Section 2: Evolution of gene families and gene functions: case histories.- Molecular evolution of the chalcone synthase multigene family in the morning glory genome.- Myrosinase: gene family evolution and herbivore defense in Brassicaceae.- A short history of MADS-box genes in plants.- Knots in the family tree: evolutionary relationships and functions of knox homeobox genes.- Section 3: The evolution of important phenomena in plants.- Evolutionary genetics of self-incompatibility in the Solanaceae.- The evolution of nodulation.- The evolution of disease resistance genes.- Hybridization, introgression, and linkage evolution.- Genome evolution in polyploids.- Transposable element contributions to plant gene and genome evolution.

'...tantalizing sampler of how two of the main menus of current biological research...can join and produce much richer results. ...this [first of Section 1] article provides one of the best expositions of the essential issues in contemporary molecular systematics...recommend it as required reading for any advanced student of evolutionary biology. The second chapter...contributes an excellent and readable explanation of the basic logical assumptions and statistical methods of likelihood estimation. ...extremely well and clearly written [two chapters in the third section]... Plant Molecular Evolution nicely complements recent contributions... (Soltis et al. 1998)...deserves a place in the library of any plant evolutionary biologist or molecular biologist.' Plant Systematics and Evolution, 226:1-2 (2001)