Without doubt, Arabidopsis thaliana has thoroughly demonstrated its usefulness as a model species. In this interesting article by Mabry et al. (with an impressive author list!), the authors propose to expand the Arabidopsis toolkit to encompass its entire order – its family of families, the Brassicales. Brassicales includes approximately 4700 species in 18 families, including […]
In this Letter to the Editor, Dr. Beronda Montgomery discusses umbrella trees (Musanga cecropioides) as metaphors for how to sustain progress after disruption, specifically the decision by the US Supreme Court to ban the use of race-conscious affirmative action in college admissions. Umbrella trees spring up in disrupted spaces and provide support when resources are […]
Horticulturalists have long used the technique of meristem culture to propagate plants, as meristems are generally considered to be free of viruses. However, the mechanism by which the stem cells in meristems exclude viruses has been unclear. Here, Incarbone and Bradamante et al. identified roles for RNA-dependent RNA polymerase 1 (RDR1) and salicylic acid (SA) […]
Review: Development of organs for nutrient uptake in parasitic plants and root nodule symbiosis This review by Cui et al. makes the interesting comparison between the developmental processes involved in root nodule formation and haustoria formation by roots of parasitic plants. As the authors observe, both are organs that are produced for the purpose of […]
All organisms need nitrogen to produce nucleic and amino acids, but nitrogen-limitation is common for many plants. Although nitrogen is very abundant in the atmosphere, most is inaccessible due to the triple bond that renders N2 relatively inert. Tremendous crop yields in recent decades are attributable largely to the application of ammoinum (NH4+) and other […]
In this essay, Richard Sever (founder of bioRxiv) provides a history of scholarly publishing, starting with the Royal Society Philosophical Transactions (1665). He then provides an overview of the current landscape: not-for-profit society publishers versus for-profit publishers; a breakdown of the real costs incurred by journals; the transition to electronic publishing and archiving; and how […]
In this interesting paper, Stritzer et al. asked a simple question, which required a very sophisticated approach to answer. Do transposable elements (TEs) affect fitness in maize? This is a particularly interesting question as 85% of the maize genome is composed of TEs or TE fragments, including over 350,000 TEs. Previous studies have shown a […]
Witchweeds (Striga spp.) are parasitic plants. Like other weeds, they compete with food crops, but they do so very efficiently by penetrating host tissues and forming vascular connections. Through this effective extraction of nutrients and photosynthate from their hosts, Striga can literally wipe out yields in infected fields. Striga are most abundant in tropical regions […]
Is it possible to summarize objectively the recent history of plant science? Shiu and Lehti-Shiu have used a combination of machine learning and language modeling to track terms used in plant science articles from the 1950s to now, as a strategy to understand how research topics and tools have evolved. The records were clustered into […]