Living in the real world: How plants perceive their environment

Abstract

So, what are the ways forward? Will we ever be able to create a signalling equivalent to the metabolic maps that we see everywhere? There is a powerful argument for letting biology drive genetics, not the other way around. Whilst genetics may be good a approach for studies on, for example, Ca2+ channels, it is less useful for studying multigene systems. But whatever direction we take next, we will need the integrated work of geneticists, biochemists and physiologists to make the advances, and all we can say with confidence is that we are probably in for lots of surprises.