Samuel Nonis, first author of Structural and biochemical analyses of concanavalin A circular permutation by jack bean asparaginyl endopeptidase Current Position: PhD thesis under examination and looking for my first post-doc position Education: PhD student in Biochemistry/Structural Biology, Honours…

Shuxiao (Susan) Zhang, first author of Root vacuolar sequestration and suberization are prominent responses of Pistacia spp. rootstocks during salinity stress Current Position: PhD student in the Plant Biology Graduate Program at University of California Davis Education: BS in plant biology,…

Perhaps, when our lives have been turned upside down by a human pathogenic virus, it’s easy to overlook the fact that plants too suffer from viral infections; but of course, they do. (And of course, famously, viruses were first discovered in plants). Although it is difficult to cure a plant of a virus…

In this review, Huss and Gierlinger describe the different anatomical features that shape sclerenchyma function in hard seed encapsulations. Hard encapsulations are classified as static (non-deforming at the macroscopic level) or responsive (deforming in response to environmental changes), depending…

Primary plant cell walls are made up of three types of polysaccharides: cellulose, hemicellulose, and pectin, the orientations and interactions of which provide the cell wall with its properties. Here, Zhang et al. examined the outer wall of onion epidermal cells through atomic-force microscopy, stress-strain…

Plants are constantly susceptible to mechanical stress and they have evolved intracellular signaling mechanisms to adapt to mechanical stimulation. Whilst it is known that ion channels activate signaling pathways in response to mechanical stress, only few of these mechanosensitive channels have been…

Plants form symbiotic associations with a variety of microbial partners, among which arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) are prominent. AMF are known to enrich plants with a host of vital nutrients including the essential macronutrient phosphorus. While the finer details of plant-AMF association are known…

In multicellular organisms, stem cells produce various cell types through asymmetric cell division (ACD), which is achieved is through polarization of cell-fate determinant proteins in the ACD progenitor cells. In Arabidopsis stomatal development, an ACD progenitor cell, the meristemoid mother cell (MMC),…