Entries by Mary Williams

Review: Relative symbiont input and the lichen symbiotic outcome ($) (Curr Opin Plant Biol)

Lichen are quite special, as they don’t exist independently of their partnership.  Lichen are composed of a fungal partner and a photosynthetic partner (the algal or cyanobacterial photobiont), and these partnerships have evolved independently many times.  Spribille provides an overview of some of the many questions that remain unanswered in the study of lichen and […]

What we’re reading: March 16th

Letters: Auxin and vesicle traffic Three letters to Plant Physiology address the role of vesicles in auxin transport, discussing the evidence and conclusions from a recently published paper from three perspectives. Does auxin accumulate in endocytic vesicles? If so, how, and why? The Letters address both the methods used and the intrepetation of the study’s […]

Update: Ethylene exerts species-specific and age-dependent control of photosynthesis

By Johan Ceuster and Bram Van de Poel Abstract The volatile plant hormone ethylene plays a regulatory role in many developmental processes and in biotic and abiotic stress responses. One of the under-explored actions of ethylene is its regulation of photosynthesis and associated components such as stomatal conductance, chlorophyll content, light reactions, carboxylation events, carbohydrate […]

Press Release: How to target a gene

Scientists find proteins important for plant development, DNA repair and gene targeting  Freiburg, Mar 08, 2018 All living cells have invented mechanisms to protect their DNA against breaks during duplication and against damage by UV-light or chemicals. A team of biologists led by Prof. Dr. Ralf Reski from the Faculty of Biology of the University […]

Transcriptomics of deepwater rice (Plant Physiol)

For most plants, becoming submerged under water can be lethal due to a restriction in gas exchange. One strategy for submergence tolerance is called an escape strategy, such as that employed by deepwater rice; the plant elongates rapidly to raise its leaves above the water level. Minami et al. used transcriptomics to further characterize the […]

Crystal structure and pH dependency of peptidase & ligase activity in Arabidopsis legumain (Plant Cell)

Legumains are proteins identified first from legumes that have subsequently been identified in other organisms. They are also described as asparaginyl endopeptidases (AEPs) and vacuolar cysteine proteases or vacuolar processing enzymes. Enzymatically, legumains can express peptidase and peptide ligase activities, and have been demonstrated to contribute to the formation of cyclic peptides. Because of the […]

Complete enzyme set for chlorophyll biosynthesis in Escherichia coli (Sci. Adv.)

Although the reactions and enzymes involved in the biosynthesis of chlorophyll are well known, the entire pathway has never before been reconstituted in a non-photosynthetic organism. Chen et al. have done this. The cells (E. coli) expressing the full pathway accumulate chlorophyll and look green! However, they are not photosynthetic, as chlorophyll is just one […]