Qin et al. show that PI(4,5)P2 functions as a susceptibility factor for plant disease. Plant Cell https://doi.org/10.1105/tpc.19.00970 By Li Qin and Yangdou Wei. Department of Biology, University of Saskatchewan, Canada Background: Biotrophic plant pathogens such as powdery mildews and rusts require living cells to feed on and they form a specialized feeding structure called the […]
Every manufacture relies on a quality control process to ensure that the released product is without defects. Similarly, each transcript leaving the eukaryotic nucleus is subjected to mRNA surveillance, which helps to ensure that only flawless mRNAs are directed to translation. For example, transcripts in which the termination codon occurs upstream of the splice junction […]
Grunewald et al. identify a flavonoid transporter required for the deposition of flavonol-b-1,2-linked diglycosides to the outer pollen wall in Arabidopsis thaliana. The Plant Cell (2020) https://doi.org/10.1105/tpc.19.00801 By Stephan Grunewald and Thomas Vogt, Leibniz Institute of Plant Biochemistry, Dept. Cell and Metabolic Biology, D-06120 Halle Background: The rigid pollen wall of all flowering plants is usually […]
If the planet does not turn to ash before 2050, farmers will need to produce twice as much on roughly the same available arable land to feed the ever-growing world population. But since the Green Revolution of the 1950s and 1960s, progress in crop yield has been incremental. And for good reason: most agronomically-relevant traits […]
Galdon-Armero et al. present an image resource that can be used to identify natural variation in leaf epidermal development in tomato. The Plant Cell (2020). https://doi.org/10.1105/tpc.20.00127 By Javier Galdon-Armero and Cathie Martin, John Innes Centre, Norwich, UK Background: Just like our skin, the plant epidermis provides an interface with the environment and protects against biotic and […]
Precise trafficking of proteins to their proper destinations in the cell, whether to an organelle, a membrane, or the cytoplasm, is required for optimal cellular function. Because most plastid proteins are nucleus-encoded and translated in the cytoplasm, proper targeting and import relies on the presence of specific N-terminal transit peptide sequences. But what signals direct […]
In eukaryotes and archaea, protein-coding DNA is transcribed to messenger RNA (mRNA) via a preinitiation complex (PIC) composed of over 100 proteins, among them regulatory proteins, numerous transcription factors, and RNA polymerase II—the enzyme that produces precursor messenger RNA (pre-mRNA). Although transcription is traditionally represented by the synthesis of a single unidirectional transcript along the […]
Antosz et al. show that the ability of RNA polymerase II to cleave transcripts is required for proper transcription and plant growth. Wojciech Antosz and Klaus Grasser, University of Regensburg https://doi.org/10.1105/tpc.19.00891 Background: In plants as in other eukaryotes, nuclear RNA polymerase II (RNAPII) transcribes protein-coding genes to produce mRNAs, which are then translated to […]
Couso et al. developed a TOR kinase assay for Chlamydomonas and show how subunit LST8 senses phosphorus availability and modulates cell growth. Plant Cell https://doi.org/10.1105/tpc.19.00179 By I. Couso, M.E. Pérez-Pérez, M.M. Ford, E. Martínez-Force, L.M. Hicks, J.G. Umen, and J.L. Crespo. Background: Because nutrient stress seriously affects healthy growth in photosynthetic organisms, understanding how nutrients […]