Ebook: Transgenic Crop Plants. Volume 1: Principles and Development

Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg, 2010. — 315 pp.
ISBN: 978-3-642-04808-1.
e-ISBN: 978-3-642-04809-8.Development of transgenic crop plants, their utilization for improved agriculture, health, ecology and environment and their socio-political impacts are currently important fields in education, research and industries and also of interest to policy makers, social activists and regulatory and funding agencies. This work prepared with a class-room approach on this multidisciplinary subject will fill an existing gap and meet the requirements of such a broad section of readers.
Volume 1 with ten chapters contributed by 31 eminent scientists from nine countries deliberates on the basic concepts, strategies and tools for development of transgenic crop plants, including topics such as: explants used for the generation of transgenic plants, gene transfer methods, organelle transformation, selection and screening strategies, expression and stability of transgenes, silencing undesirable genes, transgene integration, biosynthesis and biotransformation and metabolic engineering of pathways and gene discovery.

Contents:
Generation and Deployment of Transgenic Crop Plants: An Overview (Michael R. Davey, Jaya R. Soneji, M. Nageswara Rao, Sofia Kourmpetli, Anjanabha Bhattacharya, and Chittaranjan Kole).
Introduction.
Target Cells and Organelles for Genetic Transformation.
Methods for Introducing Genes into Plants.
Vector Construction and Genes for Plant Transformation.
Methods for Screening of Genes Introduced into Putatively Transformed Plants.
Gene Expression in Transgenic Plants.
Target Genes for Genetic Transformation.
Risks and Concerns.
General Conclusions.
Explants Used for the Generation of Transgenic Plants (A. Piqueras, N. Alburquerque, and K.M. Folta).
Introduction.
Explants Used for the Transformation of Herbaceous Plants.
Explants Used for the Transformation of Woody Plants.
Concluding Remarks.
Gene Transfer Methods (Seedhabadee Ganeshan and Ravindra N. Chibbar).
Introduction.
Gene Delivery Methods.
Physical Methods.
Combined Physical and Biological DNA Delivery.
Concluding Remarks.
Selection and Screening Strategies (Haiying Liang, P. Ananda Kumar, Vikrant Nain, William A. Powell, and John E. Carlson).
Introduction.
Selection Strategies.
Screening Strategies.
Marker-Removal Strategies.
Conclusions.
Levels and Stability of Expression of Transgenes (Rajib Bandopadhyay, Inamul Haque, Dharmendra Singh, and Kunal Mukhopadhyay).
Introduction.
Gene Design for Insertion.
Quantification of Transgene Expression.
Promoters.
Factors Affecting Stability and Level of Transgene Expression.
Conclusions.
Silencing as a Tool for Transgenic Crop Improvement (Pudota B. Bhaskar and Jiming Jiang).
Introduction.
Procedures for Development of RNAi-Based Transgenic Gene-Silencing Lines.
Crop Improvements with Silencing Tools.
Limitations of RNAi-Silencing Technology.
Future Directions.
Transgene Integration, Expression and Stability in Plants: Strategies for Improvements (Ajay Kohli, Berta Miro, and Richard M. Twyman).
Introduction.
Methods for the Analysis of Transgenic Loci.
Locus Structure in Plants Transformed by Agrobacterium tumefaciens.
Locus Structure in Plants Transformed by Direct DNA Transfer.
Locus Structure and Transgene Stability.
Epigenetic Silencing Phenomena Resulting From Complex Locus Structures and High-Level Expression.
Conclusions.
Organelle Transformations (Anjanabha Bhattacharya).
Introduction.
Overview of Organelle Transformation.
Achievements and Technique Used in Organelle Transformation.
Conclusions.
Biosynthesis and Biotransformation (Hajiem Mizukami and Hiroaki Hayashi).
Introduction.
Biosynthesis of Useful Secondary Metabolites by Plant Cell Cultures.
Biotransformation.
Metabolic Engineering of Pathways and Gene Discovery (Miloslav Juricek, Chandrakanth Emani, Sunee Kertbundit, and Timothy C. Hall).
Introduction.
The Beginnings and Early Years of Metabolic Engineering.
The Basic Goals and Strategies of Metabolic Engineering.
Engineering Primary Metabolic Pathways.
Engineering Secondary Metabolic Pathways.
Future Roadmap.
Conclusion: Factories of the Future.