Archive: November, 2018

Enhancing root growth can aid plant survival in challenging environments such as salty soils. Dickinson et al. built upon a previous study that identified D15, an inhibitor of lateral root development. They treated roots with D15 and also components of a small-molecule library to search for suppressors…

Editorial: The challenge of the post-truth era Why do people persist in thinking that climate change is not happening, or that vaccines cause autism? Scientists need to find better ways to communicate about what we do. In this editorial from Nature Cell Biology, the authors point to the low science…

In response to shading, plants undergo a suite of developmental and physiological responses known as shade avoidance. In agricultural settings, dense planting can cause shade avoidance responses, thereby reducing yields due to changes in carbon allocation that favor stem elongation over seed, fruit,…

Global climate change is currently affecting the growth and photosynthetic capacities of microalgae, which are major contributors to carbon fixation on Earth. The consequences of global climate change have already had dramatic effects on aquatic ecology. For example, thermal changes have led to coral…

The plant endomembrane system is comprised of the endoplasmic reticulum (ER), the Golgi complex, trans-Golgi network (TGN), pre-vacuolar compartment (PVC) and vacuoles. The endomembrane system, by enabling protein modification and sorting, plays important roles in cell polarity, cytokinesis, cell wall…

The plant cortical microtubule array is a dynamic self-organizing structure that controls the mechanics of plant growth by guiding the deposition of wall materials. While much is known about the properties of individual microtubules, the mechanism by which plant cells organize the cortical array into…

Polyacetylenic lipids accumulate in various Apiaceae species after pathogen attack, suggesting 
that they are naturally occurring pesticides and potential targets for crop improvement. These chemicals are also of interest because they exhibit cytotoxic activity against human cancer cell lines and slow tumor…