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This Virtual Issue "The biology of wood", highlights the central role of wood biology in basic plant science, as well as critical ecological, environmental, economic and societal issues. It seems as though the plastid and mitochondrial carbon metabolism pathway genes show a coordinated expression with their nuclear gene counterparts, and with specific stages of wood development. The functional characterization of a poplar Class I KNOX gene, I KNAT2/6b i , concluded that this gene is important for the regulation of cell differentiation, in part through its influence on the expression of NAC transcription factors (Zhao I et al i ., [14], in this issue of I New Phytologist i , pp. 1531-1543). Integration of these data showed an enrichment of specific epigenetic markers with genes expressed during wood formation, and together represent an important advancement in our global understanding of gene regulation during wood formation. [Extracted from the article]