title: Genetics and plant development.
abstract: There are only three grand theories in biology: the theory of the cell, the theory of the gene, and the theory of evolution. Two of these, the cell and gene theories, originated in the study of plants, with the third resulting in part from botanical considerations as well. Mendel's elucidation of the rules of inheritance was a result of his experiments on peas. The rediscovery of Mendel's work in 1900 was by the botanists de Vries, Correns, and Tschermak. It was only in subsequent years that animals were also shown to have segregation of genetic elements in the exact same manner as had been shown in plants. The story of developmental biology is different - while the development of plants has long been studied, the experimental and genetic approaches to developmental mechanism were developed via experiments on animals, and the importance of genes in development (e.g., Waddington, 1940) and their use for understanding developmental mechanisms came to botanical science much later - as late as the 1980s.
authors.affiliation: Division of Biology and Biological Engineering, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA. Electronic address: nprunet@caltech.edu.
authors.forename: Nathanaël
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Prunet
authors.affiliation: Division of Biology and Biological Engineering, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA. Electronic address: meyerow@caltech.edu.
authors.forename: Elliot M
authors.initials: EM
authors.lastname: Meyerowitz
mesh_terms: D015509:Developmental Biology; D017343:Genes, Plant / Q000235:genetics; D005823:Genetics / Q000639:trends*; D063245:Plant Development; D010944:Plants / Q000235:genetics*; D012045:Regulatory Sequences, Nucleic Acid
keywords: Biologie du développement des plantes; Développement floral; Flower development; Gènes régulateurs; Génétique des plantes; Plant developmental biology; Plant genetics; Regulatory genes