Phytoalexins are important antimicrobial compounds that plants synthesize to fend off invading pathogens. In the Brassica family, the tryptophan (trp)-derived phytoalexin ‘camalexin’ provides broad-spectrum resistance against bacterial, fungal, and oomycete pathogens. The regulation of camalexin…

Understanding mechanisms for assembly of plant communities involves estimating different interactions among coexisting species, and how environmental change might affect those interactions. Peréz-Ramos et al. address how functional traits and their plasticity relate to the mechanisms that allow species…

Critical residues for carotenoid biosynthesis by phytoene synthase Carotenoids are diverse structures that contribute to photosynthetic light harvesting and serve as pigments, photoprotectants, and precursors for vitamin A and signalling molecules. Phytoene synthase is the first committed enzyme…

One goal of synthetic biology is to build artificial pathways for bioengineering of high value compounds. To this end, pathways are not only split into individual reactions, but the expression of one enzyme is also split into individual parts (e.g., promotors, ribosomal binding sites, coding sequences,…

The discovery of Mediator began with the observation that two transcriptional activators could interfere with each other’s function in vitro, even though they did not bind to the same promoter (Kelleher, Flanagan and Kornberg, 1990). The hypothesis, since then well-validated, was that each transcription…

Why we need more experts in clubroot research Guest post by Susann Auer Funding for plant disease research is crucial for scientists as it aids in providing necessary resources for resistance breeding and commercial exploitation of results. It also helps to keep the amount of trained experts high…

Jiang et al. use time-lapse 3D imaging, computer vision, and mathematical modeling to quantify root system architecture. Plant Cell https://doi.org/10.1105/tpc.19.00015  By Ni Jiang and Christopher Topp, Donald Danforth Plant Science Center   Background: Root systems are the literal foundations…

Konstantinos Vavitsas, first author of The synthetic biology toolkit for photosynthetic microorganisms Current Position: Senior Research Associate, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens Education: PhD in Biotechnology, University of Copenhagen (2017), MSc in Applied Biotechnology, Uppsala…