Review: Promiscuity, impersonation and accommodation: Evolution of plant specialized metabolism ($) The huge set of chemical pathways beyond the conserved primary metabolic network is described as specialized metabolism (formerly known as secondary metabolism). The diversity of specialized metabolites is due to recent evolutionary innovations in enzyme function, as reviewed by Leong and Last. Key processes […]
The relationship between plants and arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi has persisted for 400 million years, but we are still learning about the biochemistry of this interaction. MacLean, Bravo and Harrison review how plants attract, recognize, and accommodate their fungal partners, from pre-contact through nutrient exchange. Recent insights including the role of the NOPE1 N-acetylglucosamine transporter in […]
Looking back on his 40-year career gives author Stephen Campana the opportunity to distill very useful career advice. Very briefly, here are his 12 steps, but we recommend you real all of this interesting and useful article, found here, from the ICES Journal of Marine Science. Read, read, read To be applied, or not to […]
Light is one of the environmental conditions which regulates plants’ development, but knowledge of how light-induced transcript accumulation occurs via transcriptional versus post-transcriptional mechanisms is limited. Xin et al. report Splicing Factor for Phytochrome Signaling (SFPS) as an interacting partner of the photoreceptor Phytochrome B. The sfps mutant has a hyposensitive response to light and […]
The application of systems biology is quite phenomenal these days for prediction-based modeling and interactive data visualization. Along with the genome sequencing of the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana, there has been a parallel increase in systems biology tools. Unfortunately, these tools have been developed by different groups or institutions for various purposes, whereas a unifying […]
Chloroplast biogenesis and leaf development are closely linked processes that have been difficult to tease apart, until recently. Dubreuil et al. used a pluripotent inducible cell line from Arabidopsis, basically plant stem cells, which develop chloroplasts on demand when exposed to light. Using this system as well as developing maize leaves, the researchers proposed a […]
In land plant genomes, transposable elements (TEs) are ubiquitously methylated in CG and non-CG sequence contexts. Apart from methylation of TEs, DNA methylation also occurs on bodies of actively transcribed genes, typically in the CG context, with very low or no non-CG methylation, and is referred to as gene body methylation (gbM). To begin to […]
Temperature is one of the major factors affecting plant growth and development. Martins et al. showed that elevated temperature increases root growth through elongated cell size, but reduced both meristem size and number of meristematic cells. The elongation of root growth during elevated temperature is independent of auxin and confirmed through the study of auxin […]
The histone H3 variant H3.3 is distinguished by its expression throughout the cell cycle, while H3.1 is expressed predominantly during DNA replication. Genome-wide ChIP studies in plants have shown that H3.3 is associated with actively transcribed genes, and enriched near the transcriptional end sites. This pattern also overlaps with the enrichment of RNA Polymerase II. […]