Plant Molecular Biology 2

Plant Molecular Biology 2

The VI NATO Advanced Study Institute on Plant Molecular Biology, held in Elmau, Bavaria, Germany, from 14 to 23 May, 1990, brought together representative scientific leaders from all over the world to review their lastest results. They presented lectures or posters, participated in lively discussions, educated students, and exchanged views and plans for future research in this highly exciting field of science. The experiments, data and questions were naturally varied, but all of them illustrate that the modern techniques of molecular biology, complemented by developments in immunology, genetics, and ultrastructural research, have pervaded nearly every branch of biology. The presentations show that these approaches have tremendously increased our potential both for fundamental research, our understanding of life, and by analogy to the precedents of physics and chemistry, have led and will continue to lead to "engineering sciences" and implicitly, to new industrial processes. Some of these applications are a matter of debate in the public domain today and many feel that the development of industrial gene technology requires the attention of the whole scientific community. Nevertheless, the implications of this research for the genetic improvement of agricultural plants are profound. Some of the near term technologies being developed provide novel approaches for improving the utility of food crops. They can also result in reduced dependence on the use of pesticides for food production.

Plant Molecular Biology Advanced Study Institute ; 2

Plant Molecular Biology Manual

Five years ago, the first edition of the Plant Molecular Biology Manual appeared. At that time, the editors felt that the field of plant molecular biology had matured to a point that the publication of a series of protocols in plant molecular biology was warranted. During the past five years, the field of plant molecular biology has expanded rapidly. This expansion is, among other things, reflected by the presence of several journals in the plant sciences, as well as by the increasing amount of plant sciences articles that are published in the more general journals. In 1991 approximately 3000 people attended the Third International Congress of Plant Molecular Biology in Tucson, Arizona, where more than 2000 posters were presented. It is also remarkable to see that nowadays botanical and physiological meetings pay a considerable amount of attention to plant molecular biology. Since the first edition of this manual appeared, we have published, yearly, a series of supplements to the original volume. These supplements covered new subjects and described new methods that had been developed. With time, however, the editors realized that the original manual plus supplements had become cumbersome to use, and we decided to publish a reorganized version of the manual.