Although The Plant Cell Focus Issue on Biomolecular Condensates officially comes out in September, due to the idiosyncrasies of publishing many of the articles are already available online, and I’m highlighting them now because this topic is also the focus of a plenary session at the Plant Biology meeting in August (https://plantbiology.aspb.org/plenaries/). Although the term […]
In my cruise around the internet looking for fascinating plant science, I found this tasty morsel. It’s a Spotlight feature of new paper on the effects of salt stress on plants of the genus Capsicum. I don’t want to detract from author Robert Calderon’s fine writing, so head over to Physiologia Plantarum for the story […]
Here’s a sweet story of gene expression and fruit form, starting with the simple question of “why do closely related strawberry and raspberry fruits look so different?” In strawberry, the ovaries become dry achenes where in raspberies they become juicy druplets; in strawberry the stem tip (receptacle) becomes the juicy fruit, where in raspberry it […]
I love reading about pathogens hijacking host systems; I’m always thrilled to see how “life finds a way”. Here’s another. Plants use a variety of peptides as hormones, many of which have covalent modifications of one sort or another. One class are the tyrosine-sulfated peptides, the PLANT PEPTIDE CONTAINING SULFATED TYROSINE (PSY)-family. PSY family peptides […]
Focus Issue: Biomolecular Condensates Although The Plant Cell Focus Issue on Biomolecular Condensates officially comes out in September, due to the idiosyncrasies of publishing many of the articles are already available online, and I’m highlighting them now because this topic is also the focus of a plenary session at the Plant Biology meeting in August […]
Plant Physiology Webinar: Fruit Crops (2) Celebrating the July 2023 Focus Issue on Fruit Crops Recorded Thursday, July 27, 2023 About This Webinar Fruits are major sources of nutrients for humans, and fruit growing is a significant driver for economic growth and development in rural areas and their communities worldwide. The fruit industry faces enormous […]
I’ll be honest, I was surprised to see “a decade after implementation” in this title, but indeed, the first publication describing CRISPR/Cas in plants was in 2013. We’ve learned a lot in the past 10 years and the technology provides many opportunities, but challenges remain, both of which are highlighted in this excellent review by […]
July brings delicious fruit harvests in the Northern Hemisphere, and a very special focus issue of Plant Physiology. I particularly like this issue because of the wide variety of species covered, starting with apple, banana, blueberry, cherry, citrus, and so on. It’s a nice departure from our usual “diet” of wheat, rice, and Arabidopsis. The […]
Organismal growth requires extensive coordination between cells and tissues with different identities, and this is particularly important for plants with their rigid cell walls and lack of cell motility. A key mechanism for tissue coordination involving brassinosteroids has been identified by Kelly-Bellow et al. They started by looking at a dwarf mutant (isolated from an […]