Review: Old genes for new purposes: how gene co-option reshapes plant diversity The diversity in plants’ adaptations and evolution is vast. One driver of this variety gaining traction in evolutionary studies is gene co-option, or “tinkering”, the ability to repurpose existing genes for new purposes. In a recent review by Di Stilio and Garcia, the […]
Review: Plant digital twins, the future of crop production Imagine how cool it would be if, just like we check weather apps before going out, we could “grow” a plant in our computer before planting it into our backyard, in order to predict its future success. Pauli et al. discuss this possibility through the use […]
Review: Tracing the evolution of plant cell types Plants. When we read this word, what comes to mind might be a rose, a tomato plant, or an oak tree. But plants belong to a green lineage that is far more diverse than what we encounter in daily life. This lineage also includes unicellular green algae. […]
Stromules are stroma-filled tubules that extend from plant and algal plastids. Their formation is dynamic, and their abundance increases following many different stresses and hormone treatments, yet questions remain about their function. In a recent article, Rahpeyma et al. set about to understand the roles of stromules in cultured tobacco BY-2 cells. The article starts […]
The inflorescence meristem is the tiny structure that is foundational to most of our food supply. A new work by Moreno-Ramírez et al. reveals insights into these little marvels through the use of single-nucleus transcriptomics. Their analysis identified 18 cell-type clusters that they assigned to known developmental domains by their expression of previously identified genes […]
A lichen super-pangenome spotlights its genetic architecture and interaction secrets A lichen is a unique composite organism formed through close interactions between a filamentous fungus (mycobiont) and its photosynthetic partners [algae and/ or cyanobacteria, referred together as photobiont(s)]. In an effort to better understand these mutualistic interactions, Joisten-Rosenthal et al. created a high-quality super-pangenome from […]
Current Biology has an excellent special issue on plant evolution full of fascinating articles. As an example, a Primer by Zhuo Feng looks at how plants were catastrophically impacted by the end-Permian mass extinction event approximately 250 million years ago. The fossil record from the Cathaysian Flora, found mostly in China and surrounding regions, hints […]
As close relatives of land plants, green algae provide insights into variations on photosynthesis. Many algae including Chlamydomonas reinhardtii have carbon-concentrating structures called pyrenoids that enrich CO2 around Rubisco, minimizing the competing oxygenation reaction. In a recent preprint, Ergun et al. investigated the structure of the pyrenoid, particularly how the tubules containing CO2 are integrated […]
Many metabolic reactions take place in specialized compartments (e.g., plastids, peroxisomes), enhancing their efficiency by concentrating enzymes and substrates. Plastoglobules (PGs) are dynamic lipoprotein compartments that are found inside plastids anchored to the thylakoid membranes. A recent study by Chen et al. investigated the role of plastoglobules in nitrogen metabolism in maize. The authors observed […]