Besides making our daily lives sweeter, sugars are the most important energy source in all organisms. Balancing their availability and regulating their partitioning between tissues are major determinants for growth and development. In plants, sucrose is the main product of photosynthesis and is transported from source to sink organs through the phloem. Sucrose levels are […]
The formation of the mature female gametophyte is one of the most complex processes in plants. It requires successive rounds of diploid mitosis, followed by meiosis and finally haploid mitosis, not to mention cell differentiation and cell degeneration in the multicellular gametophyte. Since the female gametophyte number and fertility directly affect seed yield and plant […]
Molin et al. describe the sequence and gene organization of an extrachromosomal circular DNA element, the eccDNA replicon, that confers resistance to the herbicide glyphosate in amaranths. The Plant Cell (2020) https://doi.org/10.1105/tpc.20.00099 By William Molin a and Christopher Saski b, a USDA-ARS, Crop Protection Systems Research Unit, Stoneville, MS; b Clemson University, Department of Plant […]
Ananya Mukherjee ORCID ID: 0000-0003-1802-1806 [email protected] University of Nebraska Lincoln Lincoln, NE 68588 Climate change is expected to make drought far more severe and frequent for plants all over the world (Bartlett et al., 2016). Drought affects yield, growth, and development of plants. Photosynthesis is particularly sensitive to drought stress, and when its efficiency […]
Liu, Ren et al. discover how a natural allele of tRNA-modifying GTPase gene PDD leads to pleiotropic developmental defects in rice. Plant Cell https://doi.org/10.1105/tpc.19.00660. By Hui Liu and Pingli Lu Fudan University and Henan University Background: Transfer RNAs (tRNAs) are components of the translational machinery that deliver amino acids to the protein elongation chain by […]
Tianhu Sun ORCID ID: 0000-0002-2513-1387 Plant Breeding and Genetics Section, School of Integrative Plant Science, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York 14853 [email protected] Plant cells harbor a varying number of chloroplasts and chloroplasts multiply by division to maintain the continuity of chloroplasts. Chloroplast division is performed by the constriction of two self-assembling GTPase rings in the […]
Ribeiro, Lacchini et al. discover a seed-specific transcription factor that helps determine the composition of the defense compounds saponins in developing Medicago truncatula seeds. Plant Cell https://doi.org/10.1105/tpc.19.00609 By Elia Lacchini, Alain Goossens, and Jacob Pollier VIB-UGent Center for Plant Systems Biology, Ghent University, 9052 Ghent, Belgium. Background: Plants are constantly confronted by a variety of threats, […]
Madeleine Seale Department of Plant Sciences, University of Oxford, South Parks Road, Oxford, OX1 3RB, United Kingdom [email protected] ORCID: 0000-0002-8924-3943 Wood formation occurs via radial proliferation of vascular cambium cells and the deposition of secondary cell wall layers (Déjardin et al., 2010). This is crucially important for the mechanical stability of the plant and also […]
Fichtner et al. transformed the embryo-lethal mutant tps1 with variants of the TPS1 gene to identify critical domains for function and localization of the gene product. The Plant Cell (2020) https://doi.org/10.1105/tpc.19.00837 By Franziska Fichtner1,2 and John Lunn1, 1Max Planck Institute of Molecular Plant Physiology, Potsdam-Golm, Germany; 2Current address: School of Biological Sciences, The University of […]