Archive: October, 2020

Name Marc Somssich Affiliation University of Melbourne ORCiD 0000-0001-5092-6168 marc.somssich@unimelb.edu.au Lignification of cell walls is a pivotal process in plant life. Lignin is a biopolymer that provides additional stability to secondary cell walls (SCWs), enables vascular cells to…

Last week, PSRW presented two review papers regarding host plant interactions with microbial populations, particularly for plant nutrient intake. Watt-Williams et al. utilize such knowledge for their paper, performing an RNA-seq dataset to identify a novel zinc transporter in Medicago truncatula. Zinc…

Post harvest water loss is one of the major challenges in handling fresh agricultural products, yet its cause and mechanism are not well understood. In terrestrial plants, stomata are the primary regulators of water flux; but when the stomata are closed or in astomatous organs such as tomato fruits,…

Photosystem I (PSI) is a membrane-bound protein complex that plays a central role in the conversion of solar energy to chemical energy to drive assimilate production.  Photosystem I is an enzyme complex that transfers electrons from plastocyanin (Pc) to ferredoxin (Fd). Here Caspy et al. have characterized…

The onset of reproductive development is tightly regulated in response to environmental cues as early and delayed flowering greatly affects seed production. In Arabidopsis, the timing of flower formation is controlled by members of the Phosphatidyl Ethanolamine-Binding Protein (PEBP) family: TERMINAL…

The germination process is completed when the radicle emerges from the seed. In eudicots, radicle growth is mechanically limited by the micropylar endosperm. As dormancy is broken and imbibition occurs, this structure is weakened so that radicle can pierce it. In grasses, the radicle is not surrounded…

This week’s Plant Science Research Weekly was guest-edited by Batthula Vijaya Lakshmi Vadde. She is currently a postdoc at Adrienne Roeder’s lab, Cornell University studying giant cell patterning in Arabidopsis sepals. Vijaya did her Ph.D. on trichome development in Arabidopsis with Utpal Nath from…

Plant floral organ development is orchestrated by master regulatory genes that control the differentiation of meristem tissue. According to the ABC(DE) model of flower development (Bowman et al., 1989; nicely summarized by Irish, 2017), different floral organs form in concentric whorls (verticils) in…