Plants produce a rich diversity of chemical compounds. In fungi, the genes encoding specialized biosynthetic pathways are frequently arranged in contiguous loci forming biosynthetic gene clusters (BGC). In plants, BGCs are not common, however, some cases have been found in angiosperms. Among the known plant BGCs, a cluster responsible for the biosynthesis of the diterpenes […]
A major update in plant genome information is taking place. Two independent groups have published genomes of hornwort species from the Anthoceros genus. Both papers arrive at similar conclusions supporting the model of a single “Setaphyta” clade, with hornworts sister to liverworts and mosses. These genomes shed light on the conserved repertoire of bryophyte genes […]
For many years, the Arabidopsis transgenic allele ice1-1 was used to demonstrate the role of the transcription factor ICE1 in freezing and cold tolerance. This gene was first identified in a screening strategy using a luciferase reporter for DREB1A expression, another TF involved in downstream signaling. New results from Kikodore et al. showed that the […]
The canonical model of gibberellic acid (GA) signaling pathway includes the recognition of the hormone by the receptor GID1 and the further degradation of the DELLA proteins by the proteasome. In this paper, Blanco-Touriñan et al. observed in Arabidopsis that the DELLA protein REPRESSOR OF ga1-3 (RGA) reduction under warm and shade conditions is independent […]
Strigolactones (SL) are a compounds that play important roles as phytohormones and as a rhizosphere signaling. Despite the great advances in their research that occurred recently, their biosynthetic pathway is still not well understood. Until now, the pathway leading to the precursor carlactonic acid (CLA) was described, where MAX1 is responsible for the last step. […]
The synthetic biology field is going to be important for the decade we began in order to face climate challenges, including food security. However, plant synthetic biology lags behind bacterial and other eukaryotic systems. Roell and Zurbriggen summarize in this review, many of the projects that are currently taking place in this multidisciplinary subfield. They […]
It was shown that the Arabidopsis intergenic long noncoding RNA (LncRNA) APOLO (AUXIN-REGULATED PROMOTER LOOP) modulates in cis its neighbor gene PID forming a chromatin loop. However, it remained unknown whether it can act also in trans modulating the expression of other genes. Now, Ariel et al. performed chromatin isolation by APOLO-RNA purification followed by DNA-seq (ChIRP-seq) and RNA-seq […]
REDUCED COMPLEXITY (RCO) is the main homeodomain transcription factor (TF) responsible for leaf complexity in cruciferous plants. RCO is lost in the model Arabidopsis with simple leaves but present in the genome of Cardamine hirsuta, a good model for leaf morphology traits. However, little is known about RCO’s genome-wide targets. In this paper, Hajheidari et […]
Guest Editor : Facundo Romani I am in an Argentinean PhD student at Universidad Nacional del Litoral (Santa Fe, Argentina) and current ASPB Plantae Fellow. I am about to finish my PhD program, during past years I worked with Javier Moreno as supervisor and spent a long stay at Monash University (Australia) in John Bowman’s […]