Differentiation of Vascular Elements in Tissue Culture

Abstract

It remains a major goal of modern biology to understand the molecular events involved in the differentiation of specialized cells. This chapter considers to what extent the experimental induction of vascular differentiation in cell and tissue cultures can be achieved and what insight such studies can generate into similar processes in the intact plant. The lack of complexity, relative homogeneity and isolation of events within individual or small groups of cells has great potential for study of aspects of signal transduction leading to the modulation of genes responsible for structural and other changes during differentiation. Although such systems cannot reconstitute cell lineages and position effects they could, in principle, help define the role of extracellular signals and other factors and their modulation by a largely empirical approach involving optimization of their effects under various nutrient and growth regulator requirements. Furthermore, biochemical studies may be able to identify aspects of metabolic regulation that are not accessible in the intact plant. Finally, tissue culture systems can be used to understand intracellular signal transduction pathways leading to changes in gene expression.