About the Cover
On the Cover: The cotyledon number is one of the important characters that has been used as the basis of classification of angiosperms into dicotyledons and monocotyledons. Al-Hammadi et al. (pp. 113-125) has isolated a tomato mutant that shows formation of more than two cotyledons during embryo development. The polycotyledon mutation results in enhancement of polar transport of auxin. The mutation has a pleiotropic effect on tomato development throughout the life cycle, causing decrease in cell size, abnormalities in shape of leaves and floral organs, and male sterility in flowers. The cover shows the large increase in number of flowers in the inflorescence of mutant (right) compared with wild type (left). While in the wild type the flowers bloom sequentially, in the mutant inflorescence all flowers bloom simultaneously.
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Copyright © 2007 by the American Society of Plant Biologists
