The majority of the plant body is derived from the activities of groups of specialized cells, known as apical meristems, at the growing tips. In a typical flowering plant, the shoot apical meristem (SAM) gives rise to the bulk of the above-ground portion of the plant, whereas root meristems give rise to the bulk of the subterranean plant body. Of course, not all plants are typical, and numerous...

Development in higher plants is characterized by the reiterative formation of lateral organs from the flanks of shoot apical meristems. Because organs are produced continuously throughout the life cycle, the shoot apical meristem must maintain a pluripotent stem cell population. These two tasks are accomplished within separate functional domains of the apical meristem. These functional domains ...

The development of outgrowths from plant shoots depends on formation of epidermal sites of cell polarity convergence with high intracellular auxin at their centre. A parsimonious model for generation of convergence sites is that cell polarity for the auxin transporter PIN1 orients up auxin gradients, as this spontaneously generates convergent alignments. Here we test predictions of this and oth...

Postembryonic organ formation of plants is fueled with cells from the stem cell niches in the shoot and root meristems. During the last two decades many players that regulate stem cell maintenance have been identified. With these factors in hand, the mechanisms establishing stem cell niches during embryo development can be addressed. Here we discuss current models of how the shoot meristem stem...

Crassocephalum rubens is a wild, economic and medicinal plant that is now threatened by genetic erosion in Nigerian ecosystem. The scarcity of the plant is due to indiscriminate collection from the wild and the difficulty in germinating the seeds. This study provides protocols for in-vitro propagation of C. rubens to supplement natural propagation, contribute to conserve the plant genetic resou...

Many plant species display remarkable developmental plasticity and regenerate new organs after injury. Local signals produced by wounding are thought to trigger organ regeneration but molecular mechanisms underlying this control remain largely unknown. We previously identified an AP2/ERF transcription factor WOUND INDUCED DEDIFFERENTIATION1 (WIND1) as a central regulator of wound-induced cellul...

At an early stage of shoot regeneration from calli of Arabidopsis, pre-meristematic cell mounds develop in association with localized strong expression of CUP-SHAPED COTYLEDON (CUC) genes. Previous characterization of root initiation-defective 3 (rid3), an Arabidopsis mutant originally isolated as being temperature-sensitive for adventitious root formation, with respect to shoot regeneration im...