During our holidays, many of us plant scientists love to go to re-energize in remote places, ideally with no technology. Have you ever imagined how our “advanced” way of living is changing our environment? In a recent paper, Knop et al. show evidence that nocturnal pollinators are negatively affected by Artificial Light At Night and […]
The transition from vegetative growth to a flower-producing reproductive state is highly regulated by environmental cues. The model plant Arabidopsis thaliana has a wide distribution throughout different habitats, so each accession has different adaptations strategies. One of the major factors that varies between accessions is the requirement and response to long periods of cold before […]
Thanks for all the contributed paper summaries! If you’d like to summarize a paper for this series, contact Mary Williams (mwilliams@aspb.org). Special Issue of Current Biology “The Making of a Plant” Browsing the table of contents of the “The Making of a Plant” special issue of Current Biology feels like a birthday celebration; there are […]
It becomes more and more clear that regulation of complex traits and processes, such as root growth and lateral root growth, involves not only gene expression quality (which genes are expressed), quantity (how much transcript is present) and space (in which cell-type transcripts are accumulating) but also time plays an important role. Walker et al. […]
Perception of the phytohormone ethylene results in the cleavage of EIN2 and translocation to the nucleus of its C-terminal end, EIN2-C. Zhang et al. showed that EIN2-C is essential for chromatin modification that allows EIN3, the main ethylene signaling transcription factor, to transcriptionally regulate its target genes. The authors demonstrated that EIN2-C is a key […]
Paramutation is a natural epigenetic process that occurs in plants and animals that is associated with methylation-mediated gene silencing. The curious thing about a paramutated allele is than it can transfer its silenced state to its homologous and active allele. This freshly paramutated allele then becomes silenced and acquires the ability to silence other active […]
Many plants living in arid environments conserve water by taking up CO2 at night through the action of the enzyme phosphoenolpyruvate carboxylase (PPC); this process, which is widespread in the Crassulaceae family, is known as Crassulacean acid metabolism (CAM). The nocturnal activity of PPC is regulated post-transcriptionally through its phosphorylation by PPC kinase (PPCK). Boxall […]
Words of Wisdom from Those Who Publish (and Do Not Perish) By Helen Sword A PhD student approached me after a writing workshop to recount his tale of woe. “I write these messy, incoherent first drafts,” he lamented. “They’re absolutely awful! Then I have to work on them for hours and hours to bash them into […]