Abstract

Cell and Molecular Biology of Wood Formation (SEB Experimental Biology Reviews)edited by R.A. Savidge, J.R. Barnett and R. Napier. Bios Scientific Publishers, 2000. £110.00, hbk (xviii + 530 pages). ISBN 1 85996 123 1.Man has used wood for artistic and practical purposes since the dawn of civilization. The properties of woods of various tree species were exploited in the ancient world in all sorts of ways: such as, in the building of boats (from coracles to quinquiremes), and in the constructions of the cities of the historical Mediterranean and Aegean cultures 1xMeiggs, R. See all References, 2xPerlin, J. See all References. Nowadays, these last-mentioned topics are the province of archaeologists and dendrochronologists. However, as we probe ever further into biological microstructure, the cell biology of wood and the physiology of trees are coming more and more into the focus of plant scientists. To many within this community, wood anatomy and wood formation from the derivatives of the secondary vascular cambium are relatively unknown. However, the publication of Cell and Molecular Biology of Wood Formation suggests that the tide is turning. Although some of the 40 papers printed here were presented in March 1999 at a specialist forum with the daunting title of EU COST ACTION E6 ‘Eurosilva’, this happened to coincide with a meeting of the Society for Experimental Biology at Heriot-Watt University (Edinburgh, UK). As the book's Preface states, this joint meeting heralded a new era in studies of vascular cambium and demonstrated the large interest in cambium among scientists working in various areas of plant biology. This renewed interest in wood and cambium research is presumably the result of the advent of molecular genetics and its ability to give access to the biochemical controls at work in the process of wood formation. Another important spur is the prospect of improved economic gains that would accompany a better understanding of wood formation in commercially important trees. Some of these more commercial aims, and how fundamental research can contribute to them, as well as provide unusual insights into the extraordinary inherent capacity of plant cells for differentiation, are usefully discussed in Chapter 2.Cell and Molecular Biology of Wood Formation embraces selected features of the whole wood scene. The book has contributions on fundamental topics such as the role of the cytoskeleton in hardwood and softwood formation (curiously, these two contributions are separated from each other, for no good reason that I could see, by 200 pages), photosynthate allocation to the cambium, cambium and auxin gradients, enzymes of cell wall formation and biochemistry of heartwood modification. However, the impression lingers that all this is rather a mixed, although on the whole fortunate, prize from the ‘lucky dip’ of what was on offer at this particular Symposium. Whether or not this snap-shot of wood research, as presented in March 1999, is a true reflection of the topic, or whether this will frustrate any browser's search for information, is open to question. Had the editors wished to construct a book with the same title but without the burden of having to produce a ‘Conference Proceedings’, the resulting publication might have had a somewhat different look, but it might also have lacked something of the spontaneity and up-to-dateness of many of the present contributions. Nevertheless, one might suppose that the present line-up does give a fair overview of the topics relating to wood cell biology presently under investigation – at least within European laboratories (fewer than 20% of the authors were from outside this area) using not only tree systems, but also using the more artificial systems of in vitro culture.On the whole, the production is ‘solid’. The overall impression of a rather dense style to the book would have been lessened if each chapter had a Summary. In fact, only two of the 40 chapters have a Summary (and only 14 have a Concluding Statement of any sort). This makes it difficult to discern the direction that most chapters take without having to read at least part of each one (no bad thing, of course, but not economical on one's time). Chapter titles alone are not particularly good guides: for example, ‘Isolation of cambium-specific genes’ (Chapter 15) – what is actually being searched for here? Genes related to cell shape, to cell division, or to the switch in cell differentiation accomplished on either side of the cambial initials, or genes for all these?Unlike many similar conference books, the index of Cell and Molecular Biology of Wood Formation is impressive. To give an indication of the index's scale and detail, consider, for example, the topics that might lie between ‘Trees’ and ‘Tropolone’ and between ‘Sanio's four’ and the ‘Six-point hypothesis for vessel development’.However, there are two areas of failure in this book's production. The first is the irritating inability to set up Polish letters correctly; lower-case letters l and e are consistently printed as something else. The second is the quality of some of the images. On the one hand, we get a lack-lustre black-and-white photograph of the veneer produced by the cambium of curly birch (Fig. 3 in Chapter 30). If this material is as valuable as the chapter says, then something better than this is surely merited. On the other hand, we do get a colour image (Plate 5, which goes with Chapter 26) showing how particular areas along the trunk of a Eucalyptus tree convert into US dollars. More seriously, these chapters (26 and 30) touch upon nearly all the main important features of wood formation – from the impact of genetics and environment on wood growth, to computerized simulation of wood formation given suitable starting parameters, and hence to the ability to predict wood properties and the associated economic returns. The rest of the book generally fills in the gaps between these key issues.

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