Annals of Botany 90: 423-424, 2002
© 2002 Annals of Botany Company
Lam, E., Fukuda, H., Greenberg, J., eds. Programmed cell death in higher plants
Programmed cell death in higher plants.
Lam E, Fukuda H, Greenberg J, eds. 2000.
Dordrecht: Kluwer.
£45.00 (hardback). x + 200 pp.
‘For everything there is a season . . . a time to build up and a time to break down . . . a time to live and a time to die.’
The quotation comes from the work of a Jewish scholar writing under the pen name Ecclesiastes or The Preacher, several centuries BC. His words capture the theme of the book under review here: that death is part of life and may be regulated by factors that include time and season. Programmed cell death in higher plants is a hardback reprint of a special edition of Plant Molecular Biology, devoted to scholarly reviews on plant cell death. The date of publication refers to the special edition of the journal, and because it reproduces the text of the journal edition, the same publication date is ascribed to the book (although I actually received my review copy in the spring of 2002). The book starts with a Preface written by two of the editors, ‘Cell death: the ‘‘Yin’’ path in the balancing act of the life cycle’. Leaving aside the gratuitous nod to eastern philosophy, this serves as a reminder of the necessity of cell death in the development and life of multicellular organisms. There are then 14 chapters grouped under three headings: Developmental cell death in plants; Induced cell death models; Machine parts and regulators of the death engine in plants. Although the last heading is rather fanciful and, furthermore, may imply to the non-expert that there is only one basic mechanism for cell death in plants, the headings do give a flavour of the contents. The first section deals with cell death in the endosperm and in the aleurone of cereal seeds (in two separate chapters), cell death in plant reproduction, cell death in petals and cell death during xylogenesis. Section two covers cell death induced by external factors, both biotic and abiotic, and with cell death in purely experimental systems: transgene-induced death and cell death in cultured cells. The final section presents some aspects of the regulatory and signalling pathways involved in some forms of plant cell death and also reviews some of the enzymes that actually bring about the macromolecular degradation during cell death.
Some who do research on programmed cell death in plants are tempted to see in it strong parallels with animal apoptosis (maybe because apoptosis was, as pointed out by the editors, originally a botanical word). It is certainly true that some of the biochemical mechanisms in plant cell death resemble those in animals. A good example is the endonucleolytic hydrolysis of DNA to generate free ends (detectable by TUNEL assay) and eventually to give rise to the presence of a ‘ladder’ of DNA fragments. However, there is scant evidence that upstream signalling pathways in plant cell death are homologous to those in animal apoptosis and it is certainly impossible for plants to carry out the later stages of animal apoptosis, namely the engulfment of the apoptotic cell. It is therefore good to see the tone set, albeit in somewhat laboured language, by Lam and Greenberg in their preface: ‘. . . we believe that plants promise to hold many surprises and differences from their animal counterparts in the way that their cells may carry out their own demise’. Although one or two of the authors seek to align particular modes or facets of plant cell death with apoptosis, most are clear in stating that plants do it their own way. Study of plant cell death is thus important in its own right.
The essential ‘plantiness’ of the various forms of programmed cell death in plants is very apparent throughout the book. One common theme that emerges is that we need to know about these plant-specific mechanisms because they are important both for our general understanding of plants and for the exploitation of plants by humankind. Of course, research has moved on since these reviews were written, but nevertheless the point is well-made: this is an interesting and worthwhile topic that surely deserves the increasing attention being devoted to it. For the reader who wishes for a good detailed introduction to the many facets of programmed cell death in plants, this book is very helpful (notwithstanding the slight datedness of some of the material). It is an intensely informative volume; not the sort of book to read straight through, but to take one chapter at a time. Inevitably in a multi-author volume, there are stylistic differences between chapters and some are rather more readable than others. However, this does not detract from the usefulness of the book. I have already found it very helpful in preparing for undergraduate teaching and it will also provide new researchers in the field with essential background information before they plunge into the more recent research literature.
The book is produced in A4 format on shiny paper; it is laid out in two columns and thus looks very much like what it is: an issue of a journal captured between hard covers. Confusingly, the original page numbers of the journal are retained at the top of each page while the book page numbers are printed at the bottom of each page. This may make for ambiguities in citing the book, although I suspect that most citations will refer to the original journal issue and not to the book (and I wonder whether the editors and authors claim one or two publications as a result of the production of this volume!). Overall the production standard is high and, in particular, the quality of the figures is good. There are, perhaps surprisingly for a volume that must have passed through several editorial phases, a number of errors of grammar and usage, including one in the Preface that is inexcusable in authors for whom English is a first language.
In summary, this is a volume that should be available to anyone with a professional interest in developmental plant physiology. If you do not have access to the original issue of Plant Molecular Biology then persuade your library to buy this book, albeit at a price of approx. £0.22/$0.32 per page.
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