Development and differentiation in plants

Abstract

An overview of plant development has been presented. In lower plants like mosses, auxin and cytokinin regulate the creation and the stability of the differentiated state of various cell types. The differentiated state is plastic and all cell types dedifferentiate to ground state, the chloronema. Even in higher plants, embryonic cells become only roughly committed during shoot meristem formation. Their terminal destiny becomes specified during the post-germination phase when the rough outline gets refined. The lack of a firm determined state, clonally heritable through mitosis, indicates that the development in plants is unlikely to be specified by a rigid programme.