The fungal pathogen Fusarium virguliforme invades a wide spectrum of host plants, ranging from eudicots to monocots. Interestingly, fungal root colonization results in disease-producing phenotypes only in certain eudicot hosts (Kolander et al., 2012). For instance, F. virguliforme causes sudden death…

Have you recently published an article in The Plant Cell, Plant Physiology, or Plant Direct as the first author? If you have, I hope you’ve taken the opportunity to send me your profile! For the past couple of years, we’ve been helping our first authors get the word out about themselves and their…

With the rise of high-impact commercially published journals in recent years, journals published by learned societies face greater competition than ever before. While many society journals are among the highest-impact titles in their fields, making them top choices among scholars, for societies it is…

Plants have veins too. As in animals, the plant vasculature facilitates the circulation of water and nutrients across tissues and organs. Unlike animals, it originates from a self-renewing population of meristematic cells forming the (pro)cambium ring within stems and tree trunks and roots. Local signals…

For the past two decades, glyphosate has been the most used herbicide worldwide, resulting in prolonged, extreme selection pressure for glyphosate-resistant (GR) weeds.  Glyphosate’s only target as a herbicide is 5-enolpyruvylshikimate-3-phosphate synthase (EPSPS), an enzyme of the shikimate pathway. …

Baetsen-Young  et al. identified key transcriptomic differences in coexpression networks following Fusarium virguliforme infection of symptomatic (soybean) vs. asymptomatic (corn) hosts    Plant Cell https://doi.org/10.1105/tpc.19.00697 By Amy Baetsen-Young and Brad Day, Michigan State University Background:…

Xinyu Fu, first author of Failure to Maintain Acetate Homeostasis by Acetate-Activating Enzymes Impacts Plant Development Current Position: Post-doctoral Research Associate, Plant Research Laboratory, Michigan State University Education: Ph.D. in Plant Biology (Minor: Statistics) from Iowa State…

Much like the spikes that deter birds from sitting on fences, trichomes — hair like projections on the leaf surface — are the epidermis’ first line of defence, discouraging insects and other pests (Levin, 1973). In addition to their role protecting the plant, trichomes are an excellent marker to…