Optimal volume and turgor in the plant cell is important for metabolism, development and growth. Excessive diffusion of water into the cell will cause extreme swelling and a loss of cellular integrity. Members of the plasma membrane MscS-like (MSL) family of mechanosensitive (MS) ion channels play a role in osmotic homeostasis, but their direct function […]
Alternative splicing is a process that can produce two or more transcript isoforms from a single gene and can increase protein diversity. FERONIA (FER) is a receptor-like kinase that serves as a receptor for the rapid alkalinization factor (RALF) peptides that regulate multiple cellular activities in response to biotic and abiotic stresses. Wang et al. […]
Plants detect microbes by pattern recognition receptors (PRRs) that sense common conserved structures called microbe-associated molecular patterns (MAMPs) and trigger the innate immunity responses. Chan et al. identified a new player in the Arabidopsis immune response known as STRESS INDUCED FACTOR 2 (SIF2) and demonstrated that the knock-out mutant of SIF2 is more susceptible to […]
Arabidopsis as a model system has been intensively studied over the past twenty years, but the proteome of Arabidopsis has been less well characterized. Here, Mergner et al. report the first 30-tissue-type integrated proteome, phosphoproteome and transcriptome atlas of Arabidopsis. The data cover the abundance of more than 18,000 proteins out of more than 27,000 […]
Aquaporins, also known as water channels, are conserved across all kingdoms. In plants, the plasma membrane intrinsic protein (PIP) subfamily controls membrane water permeability. Maize aquaporin PIP2;5 is highly expressed in roots. By reverse genetic approaches, Ding et al. showed that overexpression (OE) and knock-out (KO) of PIP2;5 affect water relations and plant growth upon […]
The AT-hook motif nuclear localized (AHL) transcription factor family has one or two DNA-binding motifs to bind to AT rich DNA regions, and they also have a conserved PPC-DUF domain for protein-protein interactions. AHLs affect a wide range of biotic and abiotic responses but the mechanism of how they regulate transcription are still not well […]
Much remains to be learned about the sensing and signaling mechanisms controlling growth in response to drought. To dissect how plants control drought via autophagy, Bao et al. found a plant-specific protein, COST1 (CONSTITUTIVELY STRESSED 1) containing a DUF641 (domain of unknown function 641) domain, that is required for normal growth but negatively regulates drought […]
As sessile organisms, plants must not only respond to a single stress, but multiple stresses at the same time. To understand the DNA regulatory elements that mediate the transcriptional response to heat, drought and combined heat and drought stress, Azodi et al. utilized the known transcription factor binding motifs (TFBM) and enrichment based putative cis-regulatory […]
About a decade ago, the ABA receptors [PYR-ABACTIN RESISTANCE (PYR/PYL)/REGULATORY COMPONENT OF ABA RECEPTOR (RCAR)] were discovered, establishing the PYL-PP2C-SnRK2s core signalling module, in which ABA-binding to PYR/PYL receptors inhibits PP2C phosphatases, leading to activation of SnRK2 kinases, yet it remained unclear whether there are upstream protein kinases leading to SnRK2s activation via phosphorylation. Here, […]