FLOWERING LOCUS C (FLC) is a flowering repressor that is highly conserved in the Brassicaceae family. This family contains species that show an annual life history (plants that flower and senesce, giving one generation per year), as well as perennials (plants that flower several times in their life cycle and don’t senesce after producing the […]
The range of responses an individual could display is a contribution of the inheritance of gene variants that determine such responses and the environments experienced by the individual itself and prior generations (nongenetic inheritance). In this review, we discuss recent empirical data to help us understand how the same cues experienced across and within generations […]
Clocks in green algae have been described as simple two-gene loops, while clocks in angiosperms have evolved to complex interlocked loops. This striking jump in complexity led Linde et al. to investigate the clocks in bryophytes and charophytes to shed light on this transition. First, through the sequence analysis of bryophyte’s and charophyte’s available genomes, […]
Dormancy (growth arrest) is a state by which seeds and plants can survive harsh conditions. Seasonal dormancy is a strategy to survive seasonally unfavorable conditions. Plants can display winter and summer dormancy. Although woody species are the main study systems for winter dormancy, herbaceous species show us that both kinds of dormancy share some similarities, […]
Climate change could affect agricultural productivity by increasing the number of days with temperatures above 30°C that staple crops like soybean, maize and wheat will experience during a given growing season. Schauberger et al. used nine statistical models to assess future threats to US crops. They found, consistent with previous studies, that for the crops […]
Cultivation of Tulipa gesneriana (tulip), an economically important species due to its ornamental value, can be affected by warming winters, leading to low quality flowers produced out of season. Leeggangers et al. have sequenced RNA and used top-down and bottom-up approaches in tulips grown in two contrasting environments (cool and warm temperatures) to shed light […]
Plants use light as a source of energy and information; however, they are also sensitive and respond to light/dark diurnal cycling, with many processes happening during the dark phase of the diurnal cycle. In this review, Seluzicki et al. emphasize the importance of studying and understanding what happens with the physiology of plants in darkness. […]
The Solanaceae family is, nowadays, one of the most valuable for humankind as it contains several economically important crops as potato, tobacco, tomatoes, etc. However, fossil records that help as understand how and where this family has evolved are elusive. In this paper, Wilf et al. walk us through the identification of a new Physalis […]
Ash dieback (a fungal disease) and the beetle Agrilus planipennis (a herbivore) are crushing ash tree populations in the Northern Hemisphere. To shed light on the genetic basis of the trees’ susceptibility and to understand the genetic diversity of these trees, Sollars et al. have sequenced one individual from the UK and annotated its genome. […]