Erich Grotewold has assembled a team of leading plant scientists to describe in detail the most commonly used methods for investigating plant gene function in a wide variety of plants, during plant pathogen interactions, and even in algae. These readily reproducible protocols include computational, molecular, and genetic methodologies designed for both general and specific problems. Here the reader will learn about powerful computational and statistical tools to help predict gene function either on the basis of comparative genomics, or from the analysis of complex genome sequences. Numerous loss-of-function and gain-of-function techniques for discovering gene function are presented in step-by-step detail.