UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Hong Ma, professor of biology and J. Lloyd Huck and Dorothy Foehr Huck Chair in Plant Reproductive Development and Evolution at Penn State, is the co-editor of a new book, Regulation of Plant Development, recently published by Springer Nature. The book presents a synthesis of recent advances in plant vegetative growth and diverse aspects of reproductive development; serves as a comprehensive resource for students, postdocs and researchers in plant development; and provides an integrated reference for scientists advancing genetic improvement of crop plants for sustainability, according to Ma and co-editors.
In this Q&A, Ma discussed the rationale behind the book’s development, the topics it covered and what questions still await researchers in the field.
Q: What need does this book fill that was not previously met by other texts?
Ma: The last time a book on regulation of plant development was published was in 1994. Huge advances have been made in the last 30 years. This book provides a synthesis of more recent progress, from the late 1990s to the mid 2020s. The materials should be a valuable resource for graduate students and postdoctoral scientists, as well as others who are relatively new to the areas of plant development.
Q: Since you first started planning this book in 2016, how has our understanding of plant development evolved, and what new frontiers does the book address?
Ma: I expect that there are some more recent advances in the areas covered by the book during the last few years, but I do not think there would be many. New research pathways in the last 10 years include more integration of genetic studies and genomic/bioinformatic analyses, including a good part that is included in the book.
In recent years and the near future, some of the emerging themes include:
- More plant studies in ecological and evolutionary contexts
- Greater cell-biological and biochemical studies to understand molecular mechanisms
- Protein structural analyses and modeling, which contribute to our understanding on protein functions
- Machine-learning and AI in understanding plant development, in combination with ever-increasing plant -omics datasets and bioinformatics
These and others are advancing rapidly and will probably mean that another edition of the book will be needed in the near future.
Q: What kind of useful genetic improvements would this book help researchers or crop scientists impart to plants?
Ma: Some of the chapters included work on crops. Other materials are on general genetic processes that are conserved in most plants. These can be useful information for candidate genes and regulatory networks that can potentially serve as starting points for modifying crops.
Q: What are the biggest questions in plant development you’d expect or hope to see answered by science in the next 10 years?
Ma: There are several really interesting questions that we’re looking forward to scientists investigating in the coming years.
- How do various environmental factors affect detailed organ, tissue and cellular processes? These can be investigated with single cell omics and cellular dissection using mutations.
- How do macromolecular machines work in all parts of cell to ensure cellular processes? These can be addressed using protein structures, protein interaction networks, proteomics and AI.
- How have cellular and molecular processes evolved? This is done using comparative analyses of thousands of plants.
- What are the functions of all proteins in the nucleus? What are the functions of proteins in other subcellular compartments. These can be investigated using all available methods and resources, including new and advanced imaging technologies.