The study of dehiscence regulation has important biotechnological potential and could be of great applicability in manipulating seed dispersal in many crops. DZ formation also provides a great system to study tissue specification from a basic science point of view. From these studies, it appears that regulation of cell differentiation involves many factors that interact in a complex network (Fig. 2). The characterization of novel genes acting at this level and the analyses of the regulatory interactions among all of them could be the key to understanding how the different cell fates are established and the physiological events co-ordinated both spatially and temporally. The identification of the signalling cascade(s) involved in co-ordinating the process is still a major issue and much work needs to be done in this direction, but there are already some indications of the paths that should be explored. Solving the many questions posed is an attractive challenge already undertaken by several researchers, and could open the door to new insights in cell differentiation issues, not only those directly related to dehiscence, but also with a broader perspective.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Soraya Pelaz, Antonio Martínez-Laborda and Francisco Madueño for critical reading of the manuscript, and Barbara Ambrose and Adrienne Roeder for correcting style and grammar. I would also like to thank Marty Yanofsky and members of his laboratory for stimulating discussion on the subject. This work is supported by the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología.
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