Polyamines including spermine and spermidine are present in all eukaryotes and have diverse roles. In plants they have been implicated in responses ranging from abiotic and biotic stresses to grain filling. Tao et al. examined the function of OsPMS1, encoding a spermine synthase, through genetic methods including RNAi and overexpression approaches. Knocking out OsPMS1 leads […]
FT encodes a mobile protein that carries a flower-promoting signal to the shoot apical meristem. In most plants, the FT gene has duplicated and diversified. Mulki et al. investigated the function of FT3 (HvFT3) in barley. Prior work showed that overexpression of HvFT1 accellerated the initiation and development of flowers. By contrast, HvFT3 overexpression accelerated […]
Do you know the difference between a wine made from Pinot noir grapes and one made from Cabernet Sauvignon grapes? Most people can taste a difference, but to really understand the wines you might want to go a bit deeper through metabolomic and transcriptomic approaches, as done by Fasoli et al. (in a project funded […]
Cell surface pattern-recognition receptors (PRRs) such as FLS2 that recognize conserved pathogen features are important contributors to plant defenses against pathogens, triggering the so-called Pattern-Triggered Immunity (PTI) response. Pattern recognition by PRRs triggers the production of extracellular reactive oxygen species (ROS), which both promotes additional defense responses and can help to weaken or kill the […]
Sometimes the plant is a relatively passive host upon which other organisms engage in dynamic interactions. Chen et al. showed that a wheat head-associated bacterium, Pseudomonas piscium, produces antifungal compounds that inhibit the growth of a plant pathogenic fungus, Fusarium graminearum. The authors started by culturing more than 12,000 bacterial isolates, from which they found […]
Special Issue: Long-distance signaling ($) Of course plants need to communicate between their different parts, and our understanding of these crucial signals has been advancing rapidly. This issue of Plant Cell Physiology includes a set of papers highlighting recent findings. A meeting report by Kiba on the Integrative Graduate Education and Research Program in Green […]
Umarah Mubeen, first author of Target of Rapamycin inhibition in Chlamydomonas reinhardtii triggers de-novo amino acid synthesis by enhancing nitrogen assimilation Current Position: Doctoral student Max Planck Institute of Molecular Plant Physiology (MPIMP), Potsdam, Germany Education: MS Industrial Biotechnology, Government College University Lahore, Pakistan Non-scientific interests: Reading, movies, travelling Brief bio: During my masters I was fascinated […]
Cătălin Voiniciuc, first author of Identification of Key Enzymes for Pectin Synthesis in Seed Mucilage Current Position: Research Associate at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf Education: Ph.D., summa cum laude (RWTH Aachen University), M.Sc. (University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada), B.Sc., with distinction (University of British Columbia) Non-scientific Interests: Family-friendly activities, football, and exploring Germany Brief bio: Throughout the […]
Mingzhu Fan, first author of A Trihelix Family Transcription Factor is Associated with Key Genes in Mixed-linkage Glucan Accumulation Current Position: Postdoctoral Researcher at Michigan State University Education: PhD in Developmental Biology (2013), Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China; BS in Agriculture (2007) Nanjing Agricultural University, Nanjing, China. Non-scientific Interests: Spending time with family, friends, […]