One of the fundamental challenges facing terrestrial plants occurs when CO2 levels are depleted at Rubisco, causing its inefficient oxygenase activity to dominate. Some plants minimize this problem by adding a carbon-fixing step upstream of Rubisco, and various algae and cyanobacteria sequester Rubisco into compartments such as carboxysomes into which they pump CO2. Engineering plants […]
Plants regularly prioritize either growth or defense, leading to reduced growth rate when the plant is under attack. Wang et al. have identified a simple switch in rice that demonstrates this principle beautifully. The Ideal Plant Architecture 1 (IPA1) transcription factor is involved in controlling grain yield by reducing the number of unproductive tillers. The […]
Many plant hormones have pleiotropic effects, switching on and off multiple, seemingly unrelated processes. As an example, jasmonates both turn on herbivore defense responses and suppress growth. Takaoka et al. have elegantly separated these, by developing a jasmonate mimic that only activates defences. The interaction of this mimic causes the jasmonate co-receptor COI1 to interact […]
It’s often surprising and a bit confusing when a protein that has been implicated in one process reveals itself to be involved in a totally different process as well. BAK1 (also known as SERK3) was first identified as a co-receptor for brassinosteroids (BRs), forming ligand-induced heterodimers with BRI1, a leucine-rich repeat receptor kinases (LRR-RKs). BAK1 […]
Special issue: Orchestrating the proteome with post-translational modifications I guess we’re well past the stage of thinking “one gene – one protein”, but even a single polypeptide isn’t really one protein, due to the huge number of different types of post-translational modification (PTM) it can be subjected to. These are summarized in the illustration that […]
Lijuan Song, first author of The genomes uncoupled mutants are more sensitive to norflurazon than wild type Current position: PhD student, Key Laboratory of Horticultural Plant Biology, Ministry of Education, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan, China Education: BS (2016) from JiangHan University, Wuhan, China Non-Scientific Interests: Eating at hot pot restaurants with my friends; reading whodunit novels […]
Huawen Lin, first author of MAPINS, a highly efficient detection method that identifies insertional mutations and complex DNA rearrangements Current Position: Instructor, Department of Genetics, Washington University in St. Louis, USA Education: PhD in Plant Physiology from Washington University in St. Louis Non-scientific Interests: Baking and travelling with my family Brief bio: I completed my PhD studies with […]
Yuki Yoshida, first author of The Arabidopsis phyB-9 mutant has a second-site mutation in the VENOSA4 gene that alters chloroplast size, photosynthetic traits, and leaf growth Current Position: Postdoctoral researcher in Graduate School of Science at The University of Tokyo. Education: PhD and MS in Graduate School of Science at Kyoto University. BS in Faculty […]
Aigerim Soltabayeva, first author of Early senescence in the older leaves of low nitrate grown Atxdh1 mutant uncovers a role for purine catabolism in N supply Current Position: Postdoctoral Researcher at the Biology Department in the School of Science and Technology at Nazarbayev University, Kazakhstan Education: Ph.D. Ben-Gurion University, Israel Non-scientific Interests: Tennis, running, painting […]