The Genomics of Wood Formation in Angiosperm Trees Xinqiang He and Andrew T. Groover Abstract Advances in genomic science have enabled comparative approaches that can evaluate the evolution of genes and mechanisms underlying phenotypic traits relevant to angiosperm forest trees. Wood formation is an excellent subject for com- parative genomics, as it is an ancestral trait for angiosperms and has undergone significant modification in different angiosperm lineages. This chapter discusses some of the traits associated with wood formation, what is currently known about the genes and mechanisms regulating these traits, and how comparative evolution- ary genomic studies can be undertaken to provide more comprehensive views of the evolution and development of wood formation in angiosperms. Keywords Wood formation • Wood development • Wood evolution • Transcriptional regulation • Epigenetics • Comparative genomics Genomic Perspectives on the Evolutionary Origins and Variation in Angiosperm Wood Introduction The evolutionary and developmental biology of wood are fundamental to under- standing the amazing diversification of angiosperms. While flower morphology and reproductive characters associated with angiosperms have been the focus of numer- ous genetic and genomic evo-devo studies, wood development is a relatively neglected trait of angiosperm evolution and development that is now tractable for comparative and evolutionary genomic studies. The ability to produce wood from a X. He School of Life Sciences, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China A.T. Groover (*) Pacific Southwest Research Station, US Forest Service, Davis, 95618 CA, USA Department of Plant Biology, University of California Davis, Davis, 95618 CA, USA e-mail:
[email protected] © Springer International Publishing AG 2017 205 A.T. Groover and Q.C.B.