Plants evolved to react to the changing environment by developing sensing and signal transduction mechanisms, which ultimately lead to changes in gene expression and altered plant performance. Transcription factors (TFs) are key to regulating the expression of individual genes. TFs can confer sequence specificity to chromatin remodelers, further shaping the transcriptional landscape in response to […]
Resistance to plant pathogens is often studied as a qualitative trait than quantitative, focusing on the lesion size and pathogen numbers. However, resistance to generalist plant pathogens, such as Botrytis cinerea, is known to involve multiple genes. Fordyce et al. used high-throughput phenotyping for quantification of Botrytis infection in Arabidopsis. The authors studied color, shape, and […]
Roots navigate through the soil, foraging for water and nutrients. Orman-Ligeza et al. observed that lateral root development is repressed when the roots are growing through the soil air spaces. Exposure to water deficit induced transcriptome reprogramming in barley roots of genes involved in many hormone pathways. The reduced lateral root formation was also occurring […]
In the face of increasing incidence of drought events, developing drought-tolerant plants becomes urgent matter. However, the increase in drought tolerance often coincides with the significant reduction of plant size, as in the case of overexpressing DEHYDRATION-RESPONSIVE ELEMENT-BINDING PROTEIN 1A (DREB1A). Kudo et al. combined DREB1A with genes promoting plant growth, including gibberellin biosynthesis enzyme […]
Nitrogen-fixing bacteria produce species-specific chitin-like molecules, Nod factors, which induce nodule development and infection thread formation in the host plant, aiding microbial infection. Malolepszy et al. performed a detailed study of symbiotic defective mutants in lotus (chit5), where the nodule primordia do not develop into nodules after inoculation with M.loti. CHIT5 was observed to function in […]
Plants exhibit various forms which are determined by the individual cells. The diversity of cell shapes within a single organism is astounding and results from the interactions between the pressure generated by the cell and surrounding tissue as well as heterogeneities in the cell wall composition. As the pressure within the cell is comparable with […]
Plants are frequently attacked by pathogens, but the pathogen-resistance is often attributed to the host. While interactions between the plant and its microbiota are recognized for their role in plant growth, their role in pathogen resistance is unknown. Kwak et al. studied the effect of soil-borne pathogen Ralstonia solanacearum causing bacterial wilt disease in tolerant and susceptible […]
Plant cell walls are important for terrestrial lifestyle, providing support and directing the plant growth. The primary and secondary cell walls differ in their chemical composition and flexibility. Secondary cell walls are less perceptive to industrial degradation processes and therefore pose problems in turning the plant biomass into simpler sugars. To identify new regulatory components […]
Receptor-like kinase FERONIA plays important role in the regulation of plant growth as well as interactions with the environment. In order to understand how FER affects plant growth Guo et al. examined global transcriptome changes in fer mutant. The authors observed that genes up-regulated by stress hormones, including jasmonic (JA) and abscisic acid (ABA), were also highly […]