Entries by Linda Palmer

Designing Drought Resistant Crops for Temperate Climates

Töpfer et al. created a combined leaf metabolism/gas exchange model to predict water saving and productivity in temperate climates. Plant Cell https://doi.org/10.1105/tpc.20.00132 By Nadine Töpfera and R. George Ratcliffeb …..a Leibniz Institute of Plant Genetics and Crop Plant Research, Gatersleben, Germany …..b Department of Plant Sciences, University of Oxford, South Parks Road, Oxford, OX1 3RB, […]

Designer for Pollen Wall Surface Pattern Formation

H. Li et al. identified and characterized a new genetic factor that controls grass-specific pollen wall pattern formation in rice. The Plant Cell (2020) https://doi.org/10.1105/tpc.20.00551 By HuanJun Li, Yu-Jin Kim and Wanqi Liang Background: Pollen, the male gametophyte in flowering plants, is enclosed within a thick and extremely resistant wall that protects it from environmental […]

SUMOylation and the Regulation of Aluminum Resistance

Fang and Zhang et al. show that SUMOylation and deSUMOylation regulate the stability of a transcription factor, thereby influencing aluminum resistance in Arabidopsis. Descriptive paragraph. Plant Cell https://doi.org/10.1105/tpc.20.00687 Background: Aluminum (Al) is a primary constraint for crop production on acid soils, which make up more than 30% of the arable land in the world. Plants […]

LACCASE8: An Important Component of a Gene Toolkit for Engineering C-lignin in Crops

Wang et al. uncover the role of Laccase8 from the model system Cleome hassleriana in initiating C-lignin polymerization. The Plant Cell (2020) https://doi.org/10.1105/tpc.20.00598   By Xin Wanga,b,, Chunliu Zhuoa,c, and Richard A. Dixona aUniversity of North Texas, 1155 Union Circle #311428, Denton, TX 76203, USA b Oil Crops Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of […]

On how to build a larger and healthier Arabidopsis ROSette using a mitochondrial protein (spoiler: reactive oxygen species)

Javier Edgardo Moreno ORCID ID: 0000-0001-9763-5325 Twitter: @JaviMorenoOK Instituto de Agrobiotecnología del Litoral (UNL-Conicet), Facultad de Bioquímica y Ciencias Biológicas, Universidad Nacional del Litoral Santa Fe 3000, Argentina   Cellular respiration is at the core of central metabolism, generating energy out of simple hydrocarbon molecules. This energy runs fundamental functions of the cell. A collateral […]

Persulfidation of ATG4 negatively regulates autophagy

Ana M. Laureano-Marín, Ángeles Aroca, et al. explore the role of persulfidation in the regulation of autophagy. Plant Cell https://doi.org/10.1105/tpc.20.00766  by Cecilia Gotor, Ana M. Laureano-Marín, Ángeles Aroca Instituto de Bioquímica Vegetal y Fotosíntesis, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas and Universidad de Sevilla, Seville, Spain   Background: Hydrogen sulfide (H2S) is a poisonous substance hazardous […]

Callose deposition during pollen development

Madeleine Seale University of Oxford [email protected] Callose is a cell wall component that is dynamically deposited and degraded during pollen development. Thanks to a new paper investigating pollen formation in cotton (Gossypium hirsutum), we now know that a pollen-specific protein regulates callose deposition by inhibiting the action of a transcription factor, WRKY15 (Li et al., […]

Getting to the Root of Plant Morphometrics, one DEEP Picture at a Time

Hüther et al. develop a new pipeline to extract phenotypic traits from plant pictures with minimal supervision from the user. The Plant Cell (2020) https://doi.org/10.1105/tpc.20.00318 By Patrick Hüther, Niklas Schandry, Katharina Jandrasits, Ilja Bezrukov and Claude Becker Background: To understand the function of a gene, we need to be able to link genetic information and […]

Surprise –salicylic acid receptors can do so much!

Liu et al. investigate the diverse roles of the salicylic acid receptors NPR1, NPR3 and NPR4 in local and long-range plant immunity. The Plant Cell (2020).  https://doi.org/10.1105/tpc.20.00499 By Yanan Liu1,2, Tongjun Sun2,3 and Yuelin Zhang2 (1 College of Bioscience and Biotechnology, Hunan Agricultural University, Changsha, China;2 Department of Botany, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, […]