The time at which flowers appear is critical for plant reproductive success. As such, the vegetative to reproductive growth transition is governed by several cues: environmental (photoperiod, temperature) and endogenous (gibberellins, age). Here, Sang et al. used an elegant forward-genetics approach to identify uncharacterized regulators of the Arabidopsis endogenous flowering time pathways. A quintuple mutant […]
Throughout the plant science community, the use of computational or in silico analyses which precede traditional studies are gaining traction to identify research opportunities. Multiscale computational models are those which assimilate data from all biological system levels from gene to ecosystem. Benes et al. advocate for the use of such multiscale models to advise crop […]
Recent advances have facilitated the generation of huge phenotypic datasets from plant populations. However, the means to inexpensively organise such datasets to unequivocally determine causal genes has evaded researchers. Here, Baxter discusses how human bias when selecting candidate genes is compromising research efficiency. When utilising breeding populations for association mapping, a genomic region correlated to […]
Although most angiosperms produce both male and female gametes, in some species an individual is either male or female, a property known as dioecy (literally, two houses). Dioecy exists in ~6% of angiosperms and is hypothesized to have evolved several times independently. While much research has been conducted to comprehend the molecular basis of sex […]