By Peter Ulvskov and Jesper Harholt For the first time in a very long time, a new polysaccharide is reported in plants. Roberts et al. (2018) discovered an arabinoglucan in the moss Physcomitrella patens. This discovery came about not as a result of biochemical characterization of the moss cell wall, but rather as a targeted […]
Toh et al. screened more than 20,000 chemicals from chemical libraries for compounds that regulate stomatal movement. They used Commelina benghalensis for their screen, as its stomata are about twice as large as those in Arabidopsis thaliana. They identified nine compounds that inhibited stomatal opening in the light, which they called SCL1 – 9, one […]
A bean leaf might not look big to us, but to a bacterium it is huge: authors Remus-Emsermann and Schlechter point out that in terms of scale, a microbe is to a leaf as a human is to the island of Trinidad. Like an island, a leaf has diverse inhabitants and provides diverse microhabitats. Much […]
The one sure-fire way to get children excited about plants is to show them how a Venus flytrap works. But how does it work? We’ve all heard that the trap “counts” the number times it is triggered, and that it requires two or more touches in quick succession to close – but how does it […]
Plants produce a wide range of polysaccharides in their cell walls, some of which are restricted to certain species. Roberts et al. investigated a moss gene encoding an enzyme that resembles a mixed-linkage (1,3;1,4)-β-glucan (MLG) synthase. When expressed in tobacco, this enzyme produces a novel unbranched, unsubstituted arabinoglucan (AGlc) polysaccharide that consists of both glucose […]
Review: Venus Flytrap: How an excitable, carnivorous plant works The one sure-fire way to get children excited about plants is to show them how a Venus flytrap works. But how does it work? We’ve all heard that the trap “counts” the number times it is triggered, and that it requires two or more touches in […]
New work published in The Plant Cell is featured in this press release from the University of Adelaide. An international team of scientists including the University of Adelaide has discovered a new complex carbohydrate in moss that could possibly be exploited for health or other uses. The scientists, from Australia’s ARC Centre of Excellence in […]
An image from a paper published in Plant Cell is featured as The Scientists “Image of the Day” Image of the Day: Pseudomonas Autophagy Researchers identify antibacterial functions of cell death in Arabidopsis when the plant is infected with Pseudomonas. By The Scientist Staff | March 30, 2018 A plant cell (Arabidopsis) infected with Pseudomonas […]
In a new study published in The Plant Cell, a team of researchers identified a gene that limits yield losses in rice plants exposed to salt stress and deciphered the underlying mechanism. Soil salinity poses a major threat to food security, greatly reducing the yield of agricultural crops. Rising global temperatures are expected to accelerate […]