Understanding Plant Development

This course takes you on a journey through the broad spectrum of processes in plant development, from the embryo to the mature plant. You will begin with the development process of various tissues and organs from a single cell zygote in a complex multicellular plant. This incorporates an explanation of how the different organs of a plant are developed during various phases of their life cycle, particularly an angiosperm plant and how the process of pollination results in the double fertilisation and formation of seeds. The characteristic features of plant growth, where the meristematic activities are positioned and how they are maintained and coordinated during the process of plant growth and development will be uncovered. This encompasses how the primary, secondary and lateral growths and developmental processes together ensure proper plant architecture. You will explore the evolving developmental pattern of plants that are continuous, responsive to environmental cues and regenerative. Alongside this, the process of attaining the developmental features by the exchange of the information between the cells that are local as well as long-range are also discussed.

Next, the course goes on to explain how the cell fate in the developing region is more dependent on the positional cues compared to the lineage information. The ‘Forward Genetics’ approach for determining the genetic basis responsible for a phenotype will be introduced. Can you imagine being able to differentiate ways of generating and identifying a particular developmental mutant with a defect or with a phenotype? The process of analysing the inheritance pattern, mapping the genetic locus and validating the association of a genotype and phenotype are resolved. You will find out how the forward genetics-based approaches are being practised for analysing development in the case of plants. Following from this, you will be taught about the process of identifying single genes with putative developmental function and genome-wide genes for developmental processes. This will include the method of identifying and isolating the gene of interest in studying its developmental functions. Further, the process of studying the expression pattern for identifying the genes that are differentially expressed between two conditions or two organs are examined. You will investigate the means of analysing the expression pattern of differential genes in different conditions.

Understanding the spatial and temporal expression pattern analysis of a gene in plants will complete this course as you explore the techniques used for localisation and detection of specific DNA and RNA sequences in cells and a ‘gene trap’ strategy for the discovery of specific cell-type markers. This will involve the activation of genes within specific tissues of an organism at specific times during development. The approaches for investigating the gene function and its physiological significance by systematically knocking out genes one by one through disrupting the function using insertional mutagenesis are underlined. Methods of generating dominant mutations in plant cells by random insertion of a T-DNA carrying constitutive enhancer elements will also be explained. You will notice how two genes produce a phenotype in light of each mutation's individual effects by revealing the functional relationships between genes and pathways. ‘Understanding Plant Development’ is an informative course that will interest those studying plant sciences, botany, biotechnology, agriculture or anyone who has an interest in these topics. Why wait? Sign up today and start learning about this ever-growing and compelling area of plant development!