Recent Posts

Zygotic genome activation occurs shortly after fertilization in maize

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A plant’s life begins with the fusion of haploid egg and sperm cells to produce a diploid zygote. Many of the processes that control early development are under the control of the maternal genome, but at some point there is a shift towards zygotic control. Chen et al. investigated when this shift occurs…

Emergence of subgenome dominance across time and ploidy

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Many plants are not simple diploids (two copies of each chromosome) but are instead are the result of various forms of polyploidization (for example, whole-genome duplication or interspecific hybridization). Polyploidization can disrupt well-established controls over gene expression levels, transposon…

Tomato fruit weight controlled by Cell Size Regulator

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Mu et al. mapped a QTL previously shown to control fruit weight in tomato, and named the responsible gene Cell Size Regulator (CSR). They found that CSR-D, the derived allele, increases cell size and is widespread in Solanum lycopersicum var. lycopersicum, but not in ancestral tomatoes with smaller fruit.…

Genome re-sequencing reveals the history of apple and supports a two-stage model for fruit enlargement

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Cultivated apples (Malus domestica) trace their roots to Kazakhstan 4000 – 10,000 years ago, and since then have been propagated, transported, hybridized to other Malus species, and domesticated. Duan et al. sequenced more than 100 diverse accessions to trace apple's history and identify loci subjected…

Temperature increase reduces global yields of major crops in four independent estimates ($)

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Although future negative impacts on crop yields expected from rising temperature are well known to plant scientists, there are still some members of the broader public that need to be made aware of this problem. Zhao et al. combined four different methods of assessing the impact of increasing temperatures…

Publishing with objective charisma: Breaking science’s paradox ($)

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Doublday and Connell ask whether scientific writing has to be so dull, and conclude that there is room for improvement. They are quick to argue that sensationalism and inaccuracy are not acceptable, but that it is possible for scientific writing to be both objective and charismatic. However, for the…

What We're Reading: August 25th

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Review: Auxin signaling Leyser summarizes our current understanding of the what, how and why of what auxin does (and doesn’t) do. For example, she points out that, “Auxin does not instruct cells to do anything in particular, but rather it influences the  behavior of cells according to their…

Combatting the Impostor Syndrome in academic science – you probably are as smart as they think!

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Rebecca Mosher is an Associate Professor in the School of Plant Sciences at the University of Arizona who studies small RNAs and epigenetics. You can reach her at @rm0sher . Have you ever felt like you don’t belong in academic science? Do you think that you aren’t as smart as the people across…

Distinct phases of Polycomb silencing to hold epigenetic memory of cold in Arabidopsis ($)

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Some plants can only flower after a cold period. This cold period has been shown to cause epigenetic gene silencing of an inhibitor of flowering, which in Arabidopsis is encoded by FLC. Yang and Berry et al. explore the mechanism by which FLC is epigenetically silenced in response to cold. Previous studies…