Plants need to carefully control which genes are active as they grow and switch from one developmental stage to another. A new study by Geshkovski et al. reveals that ULTRAPETALA1 (ULT1), previously thought to mainly counteract gene silencing, can also promote gene silencing by working directly with Polycomb Repressive Complex 2 (PRC2), a molecular machine […]
For successful fertilization, sperm must reach the egg. Most land plants deliver non-motile sperm through a pollen tube. However, the liverwort Marchantia polymorpha retains the ancestral form of fertilization, sperm that are motile and use flagella to swim towards the egg. This process offers a unique window into the evolution of reproductive signaling. A recent […]
Although calcium ions are universal second messengers, plants employ both conserved and unique strategies to decode Ca²⁺ signals. In a new review in Cell, Sheng Luan reviews the molecular tools used to study calcium signaling in plants and the mechanisms that govern this process. Like other cells, plant cells maintain low internal Ca²⁺ levels (about […]
Systemic acquired resistance (SAR) provides plants with broad protection against many pathogens, but until recently, it was unclear how SAR signals are produced, transported, and expressed in distant tissues. In a new study in Nature Plants, Gaikwad and colleagues created a reporter construct that tracks these processes in real time. Following inoculation of leaves with […]
Vector-borne viruses such as rice stripe virus (RSV) are transmitted from plant to plant by insects such as planthoppers. Plants under attack often emit volatile compounds such as methyl salicylate (MeSA) that attract parasitoid wasps that destroy the eggs of the virus-transmitting insects. In a recent study, Liu and colleagues found that rice viruses decrease […]
One of the main challenges in plant virology is detecting the active replicase enzyme of positive-strand RNA viruses in living cells, since adding fluorescent tags often prevents it from functioning. A recent study in Plant Physiology by Ishihara et al. has found a way around this problem. The researchers adapted the human influenza hemagglutinin (HA) […]