Charles J. Arntzen – författare

Plant Biotechnology provides an introduction to the fundamental life processes and reviews topics relevant to plant biotechnology. This book discusses the manipulation of biological systems to solve practical problems in industry or agriculture. Organized into four parts encompassing 18 chapters, this book begins with an overview of the fundamental techniques essential to plant biotechnology. This text then describes the various aspects of the regulation of gene expression in plants and reviews the molecular architecture of plant genes. Other chapters consider chloroplast genome from various organisms and present the practical examples of the significance and uses of biotechnology in crop improvement. This book discusses as well the methods for inducing plant gene expression in heterologous prokaryotic and eukaryotic systems. The final chapter deals with the potential for using gene transfer technology for crop improvement. This book is a valuable resource for plant physiologists, biochemists, plant scientists, genetic engineers, and evolutionary biologists.

The Encyclopedia of Plant Physiology series has turned several times to the topic of photosynthesis. In the original series, two volumes edited by A. PIRSON and published in 1960 provided a broad overview of the entire field. Although the New Series has devoted three volumes to the same topic, the overall breadth of the coverage has had to be restricted to allow for greater in-depth treatment of three major areas of modern photosynthesis research: I. Photosynthetic Elec­ tron Transport and Photophosphorylation (Volume 5 edited by A. TREBST and M. AvRON, and published in 1977); II. Photosynthetic Carbon Metabolism and Related Processes (Volume 6 edited by M. GIBBS and E. LATZKO, and published in 1979); and III. Photosynthetic Membranes and Light-Harvesting Systems (this volume). As we approached the organization of the current volume, we chose a set of topics for coverage that would complement the earlier volumes, as well as provide updates of areas that have seen major advances in recent years. In addition, we wanted to emphasize the following changes in the study of photo­ synthetic systems which have become increasingly important since 1977: the trend toward increased integration of biochemical and biophysical approaches to study photosynthetic membranes and light-harvesting systems, and a renewed appreciation of the structural parameters of membrane organization.