Plants cannot escape a bite from herbivore or being cut by a lawn mower, but they can regrow new leaves or even entire stems after damage. From simple mosses to giant sequoia trees, the process of building a new organ after wounding may be more similar than we previously thought. Key players in this process […]
The colonization of land by plants was a crucial event in Earth’s history that fundamentally transformed our planet’s surface. Early plants were small and structurally simple, but terrestrial ecosystems also included other, non-plant organisms. Among the most striking were enigmatic organisms known as Prototaxites, which appear in the fossil record around ~ 420 million years […]
Plant photosynthetic machinery can easily be overwhelmed by strong sunlight. Therefore, plants developed a set of processes called Non-Photochemical Quenching, a safety valve that dissipates excess light energy as heat. In a recent review, van Amerongen and Croce synthesize decades of often contradictory research to clarify how this vital photoprotective process works. The authors focus […]
Photosynthetic organisms were long believed to only use visible light for energy capture, until the discovery of far-red photosynthesis challenged this view. Far-red photosynthesis is thought to be enabled by the presence of the pigment chlorophyll f. Although previous studies have identified chlorophyll f within Photosystem I of cyanobacteria, its precise photochemical function has remained […]
Plants have an extraordinary ability to regenerate entire organs or even embryos from a single somatic cell, a phenomenon known as totipotency. Remarkably, differentiated cells can reacquire totipotency and form embryos through somatic embryogenesis, however molecular mechanisms behind this developmental plasticity remain unclear. To address this, Tang et al. used Arabidopsis thaliana, in which somatic […]
Polar auxin transport is central to plant development, relying on coordinated activity of influx carriers (AUX/LAX), efflux carriers (PINs), and ABCB transporters. While structural insights and transport mechanism of PIN proteins has been available, those of the AUX/LAX family have remained unresolved. In a recent study, Yang et al. (2025) reported the first structure of […]
Flowers are not only a source of beauty and awe but also an important agronomical trait, since many crop yields depend on the proper timing of flowering. With increasing fluctuations in temperature, plants must finely tune the flowering process. In Arabidopsis thaliana, flower primordia formation at colder temperatures depends on CLAVATA (CLV) peptide signaling, but […]