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Plants use the Sun´s energy to synthesize the basic biomolecules that make up all the organic matter of all organisms of terrestrial ecosystems, including ourselves. Therefore, understanding their adaptive mechanisms to variations of environmental factors, both biotic and abiotic, is fundamental, and particularly relevant in the current context of rapid climate change. Some of the most important adaptive mechanisms of plants are the electrical and chemical signaling systems for the exchange of information between proximally and distally located cells. These signalling systems allow plants to dynamically coordinate the activities of all cells under a diversity of situations. In this Research Topic, we present eight articles that bring up new hypothesis and data to understand the mechanisms of systemic electrical signaling and the central role that it plays in adapting the whole plant to different stresses, as well as new findings on intracellular calcium and nitric oxide-based signaling pathways under stress, which could be extrapolated to non-plant research.
This book presents an investigation of gigaseal formation using micro/nanotechnology. The aims of the book are twofold. First, it explains the mechanisms of gigaseal formation using the latest discoveries. Second, it provides practical techniques for frequent formation of high resistance seals. The formation of a high-resistance electrical seal, also known as a gigaseal, between a cell membrane and a glass micropipette tip is essential in patch-clamp experiments. Even though four decades have passed since the introduction of the patch-clamping technique by Neher and Sakmann, gigaseal formation remains an obstacle in developing the high-throughput ion channel screening systems required by the pharmaceutical industry. Here the authors share their latest methods for achieving gigaseal formation and describe techniques that are highly desirable at both research and industrial levels. Nanotechnology has been found to be a powerful tool for studying and modifying glass micropipettes and in tackling the problem of gigaseal formation.
This detailed overview of the structure of the sieve elements of the major plant groups, from algae to flowering plants, includes extant and extinct groups, revealing both common and divergent solutions to the problem of long-distance assimilate transport.
Our view of plants is changing dramatically. Rather than being only slowly responding organisms, their signaling is often very fast and signals, both of endogenous and exogenous origin, spread throughout plant bodies rapidly. Higher plants coordinate and integrate their tissues and organs via sophisticated sensory systems, which sensitively screen both internal and external factors, feeding them information through both chemical and electrical systemic long-distance communication channels. This revolution in our understanding of higher plants started some twenty years ago with the discovery of systemin and rapid advances continue to be made. This volume captures the current ‘state of the art’ of this exciting topic in plant sciences.
Plant neurobiology is a newly emerging field of plant sciences. It covers signalling and communication at all levels of biological organization – from molecules up to ecological communities. In this book, plants are presented as intelligent and social organisms with complex forms of communication and information processing. Authors from diverse backgrounds such as molecular and cellular biology, electrophysiology, as well as ecology treat the most important aspects of plant communication, including the plant immune system, abilities of plants to recognize self, signal transduction, receptors, plant neurotransmitters and plant neurophysiology. Further, plants are able to recognize the identity of herbivores and organize the defence responses accordingly. The similarities in animal and plant neuronal/immune systems are discussed too. All these hidden aspects of plant life and behaviour will stimulate further intense investigations in order to understand the communicative plants in their whole complexity.
The discipline of neurodesign is a highly interdisciplinary one, while at the same time in the process of maturing towards real-life applications. The breakthrough about to be achieved is to close the loop in communication between neural systems and electronic and mechatronic systems and actually let the nervous system adapt to the feedback from the man-made systems. To master this loop, scientists need a sound understanding of neurology, from the cellular to the systems scale, of man-made systems and how to connect the two. These scientists comprise medical scientists, neurologists and physiologists, engineers, as well as biophysicists. And they need the topics in a coherently written work with chapters building upon another.
The disease: symptomatology and host range of barley yellow dwarf; Distribution and economic importance of barley yellow dwarf; Epidemiology of barley yellow dwarf in Europe; Epidemiology of barley yellow dwarf in Australasia; Interactions of barley yellow dwarf viruses: cross-protection and interactions with other pathogens and with abiotic factors; The viruses: purification and viron characterization of barley yellow dwarf viruses; Genome structure and function of barley yellow dwarf viruses; Taxonomy of barley yellow dwarf viruses; The vectors: biology and taxonomy of vectors of barley yellow dwarf viruses; Aphid transmission of barley yellow dwarf viruses: interactions between viruses, and host plants; Control: barley yellow dwarf: diagnostic procedures and reagents; Cultural chemical, and biological methods for the control of barley yellow dwarf; Host plant tolerance or resistance for control of barley yellow dwarf; Prospects for genetically engineered resistance to barley yellow dwarf viruses.
Ten years ago, at the International Botanical Congress in Edinburgh, a group of us from various countries discussed the difficulty of pursuing academic problems in depth at such meetings. In particular, we were discouraged at the poverty of time for phloem transport. From long association, we were conscious of the extraordinary breadth of the problem, from developmental through anatomical, to biophysical and physiological. Only by a reasonable understanding of all these components could one hope to come to some kind of understanding. We decided to establish common plant material so that data would have a common source. Similarly, we resolved to exchange information by circulating pre-publica...