Molecular ecotoxicology of plants. Ecological Studies Vol. 170.
Sandermann H. ed. 2004.
Berlin: Springer. $89·95 (hard cover). 241 pp.
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The main content of the book is comprised of a series of six chapters that approach specific, selected aspects written by experts in their respective fields. This central part of the book does not claim a complete coverage; instead these concise review articles tackle different aspects of external factors such as xenobiotics, high light, heavy metals or microbes, or internal agents such as activated oxygen species, along with detailed information on selected molecular events and pathways. The examples include signalling molecules like salicylic acid and ethlyene, and transcription factors or metabolic actions exerted by glutathione S-transferases. Furthermore, Chapter 7 deals with the influence of soil bacteria on plant fitness. All chapters give very comprehensive overviews and offer broad and multiperspective views on the respective topics. For example, Chapter 2 gives information about the gene family structure of glutathion S-transferases, their role in herbicide tolerance along with evidence that differential expression levels rather than evolutionary diversity of the enzymes renders crops more resistant to certain herbicides. Nevertheless, the chapter is not focused on detoxification but also discusses numerous other roles of glutathion S-transferases in plants but also in mammalian organisms, such as signalling, redox functions and ligand binding. As another example, Chapter 5 compiles the current status on the role of salicylic acid and nitric oxid as signalling molecules in induced resistance. The reader finds information on the biosynthesis of both molecules, the concepts and the known pathways of the hypersensitive response of plants to pathogen attacks. Again, a comparison with NO research in animals is used to discuss potential roles in plants. In addition, a tabular compilation of Arabidopsis thaliana lines with altered SA levels is a helpful addendum to this chapter.
In all chapters, the references constitute a good resource of reviews and original research publications that guide further reading. The tables are usually very instructive, whereas some figures are less illustrative. The combination of a few coloured figures at the end of the book is somewhat inconvenient but maybe this measure reduces the costs of printing. However, more valuable to the reader is the fact that cross-referencing in between the chapters has been well edited.
The final Chapter 8 sets out to discuss the potential for a scaling from molecular to ecological processes, as proposed in the introductory chapter. However, the authors nicely elaborate the many pitfalls that obviate such a straightforward approach. In fact, they correctly state and cite previous workers that bottom-up scaling becomes questionable when a multitude of non-controlable other factors influence the higher levels and may even feedback to the lower levels. Nevertheless, there are some dramatic ecological instances, such as events leading to the extinction or spread of a species, that can be connected to molecular responses or changes. Thus, a fully scaled molecular ecophysiology of plants may be feasible in selected cases. The authors conclude that new concepts and statistical approaches are necessary and desirable to combine the multitude of new information at the molecular level up to the single-plant level with information on ecosystems.
The conceptual problem may be that molecular and genetic determinants are necessary to explain an ecosystem but they will be not sufficient to extrapolate the fate of an ecosystem, as numerous other external and mostly chaotic factors that are far off the molecular signatures of the ecosystem members will have an impact. With this cautious remark in mind, the book is a concise collection of articles that gives up-to-date insight into selected mechanisms of how plants perceive and react to environmental factors and how this knowledge may be used to interpret outcomes on larger scales. As such, it is a valuable read for both advanced students and researchers working in the field.
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