Sometime around 1.8 to 2 billion years ago, complex eukaryotic cells appeared for the first time, providing the ancestor for plants, animals and fungi. Many lines of evidence have indicated that this event probably involved an ancient archaeon taking up an ancient bacterium, the progenitor of all mitochondria.…

Plant tissues continue to develop postembryonically through proliferation at the shoot and root apical meristem. In the vasculature, radial growth occurs through the proliferation of the undifferentiated cambial cells. Members of the SUPPRESSOR OF MAX2 1-LIKE (SMXL) proteins are known to be involved…

Filamentous pathogens (fungi and oomycetes) use a variety of tactics to obtain nutrients from plants. Classically, they have been categorized as biotrophic ("eating" living tissues), nectrotrophic (eating dead tissues) or hemibiotrophic (biotrophic followed by heterotrophic). Hane et al. point out that…

Previously, crop-associated mycobiomes were thought to assemble largely under the control of deterministic selection by the plant host with limited influence from drift. This study by Gao et al., highlights the important role of stochastic processes in fungal community assembly, particularly in the hosts’…

Tamburino et al. analyzed text from more than 12,000 research articles published in the past 50 years that included the terms “global” or “world” and “food supply”, “food demand’, or “zero hunger”. From this dataset, they quantified terms related to population, total food production,…

Review. Small RNAs and extracellular vesicles: New mechanisms of cross-species communication and innovative tools for disease control We have only recently begun to appreciate the phenomenon of cross-species or cross-kingdom small RNA transfer, and its applications. Using examples from plants and…

Csaba Papdi, co-first author of E2FB interacts with RETINOBLASTOMA RELATED and regulates cell proliferation during leaf development Current Position: Postdoctoral researcher at IBMP, Institut de biologie moléculaire des plantes du CNRS, Strasbourg, France Education: PhD in plant molecular biology,…

Mingjia Chen. first author of A Kinase and a Glycosylase Catabolize Pseudouridine in the Peroxisome to Prevent Toxic Pseudouridine Monophosphate Accumulation Current Position:  Associate Professor, College of Life Sciences, Nanjing Agricultural University Education: PhD at the Institute of Plant…