Fujii et al. studied the role that blue-light perceiving phototropins play in sensing temperature. They studied the temperature response in the liverwort Marchantia polymorpha, which has only one phototropin. At 5°C, blue-light perception by phototropins induces a cold-avoidance response in which chloroplasts move to the sides of the cells; by contrast at 22°C the chloroplasts […]
Plant Blindness negatively affects plant conservation, despite plants being a majority on the endangered species list. Balding and Williams review the research on plant blindness and argue that it isn’t inevitable. There are cultures in the world more keenly aware of plants than most in western societies whose minds focus more on animals. This bias […]
High throughput phenotyping (HTP) is a frontier in plant biology. Shakoor et al. review the state of HTP and various levels of implementation, current limitations, and the new horizons for the field. Envirotyping – getting all the information possible from an individual plant in a field to fully understand its context and phenotype – is […]
With data generation, high false positive rates, and inability to reproduce findings all on the rise in science, Benjamin et al. propose lowering the standard threshold of the p-value to 0.005. The p < 0.05 standard would be termed “suggestive” under this scheme. Some of the caveats are that this applies to new hypotheses, not […]
The International Botanical Congress was held in Shenzhen, China (#IBC2017) last week. The AoB Blog published several blog posts and tweet collections from the conference. The Congress also voted on The Shenzhen Declaration on Plant Science designed to unite plant scientists around several priorities and actions. Reviewing conference dispatches is a good way to take […]
Hu et al. found a sterile rice mutant defective in meiosis. They mapped it to MEICA1, a widely conserved but uncharacterized protein required to ensure crossovers occur between allelic regions of chromosomes. It also inhibits allelic homologous recombination. This adds to a suite of proteins eukaryotic organisms have to maintain genome integrity and ensure proper […]
With both biotic and abiotic stresses predicted to worsen due to climate change, the ideal crop of the future must have traits to handle both. Common abiotic stresses like drought, cold, and salinity cause osmotic stress by disrupting cell turgor. Exposure to a mild salt treatment leads some plants to acquire osmotic tolerance. Ariga et […]
Light and temperature are two major factors affecting plants’ growth. Jiang et al. discovered a circuit (EBF1/2-PIF3-CBF) that integrates light and freezing tolerance by integrating EBF1/2 (EIN3-BINDING F-BOX 1/2), PIF3 (PHYTOCHROME-INTERACTING FACTOR 3) and CBF (C-REPEAT BINDING FACTOR). In light, temperate growth conditions, PIF3 directly represses CBF expression. PIF3 is subjected to ubiquitination and degradation […]
Cytokinin, one of the major plant hormones, is involved in many aspectis of plant growth and development. Over the last few decades, the biosynthetic and signaling pathways have been discovered. The mechanistic explanation to control a myriad array of gene expression is still a black box. Zubo et al. used a GFP tagged version of […]