By Steven Burgess, posted on Medium “As I am coming to the end of my time as postdoc I have been thinking a lot about what I have learnt and perhaps wish I knew when I started out. Inspired by the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke’s ‘Letters To A Young Poet’, I am noting down […]
Classic genetic approaches have been instrumental in identifying genes that control developmental and defense networks, but as Hillmer et al. point out, analysis of single mutants is complicated by network buffering. They describe network buffering as occurring when the effect of losing a gene’s function is masked by the function of other genes. They point […]
The interaction between wild tobacco (Nicotiana attenuata) and the moth Manduca sexta, which is both a pollinator and a herbivore, is a model for plant/ arthropod interactions and has revealed insights into chemical signals and defenses. Zhou et al. show that a single compound, the sesquiterpene (E)-α-bergamotene, serves as both a pollinator attractor when produced […]
Nitrate acts as a potent signal as well as a source of nutritional nitrogen, but key players in the nitrate response have been missing from our understanding. Liu et al. identified a unique calcium signal stimulated by nitrate in mesophyll cells. They then found that in vitro kinase activity of Ca2+-sensor protein kinases (CPKs) are […]
The first dominant male-sterile mutant in wheat, ms2 was identified more than 40 years ago, and Xia et al. have now identified the molecular basis for this trait. They find that the mutation is caused by a transposon (a terminal-repeat retrotransposon in miniature, or TRIM) insertion into the promoter of the Ms2 gene, causing it to […]
The release of the tea (Camellia sinensis) genome completes the set of the three major caffeine-producing plants (also coffee and cacao). (Note that the title of this article refers to the “tea tree”, a name that is often used for a different plant, Melaleuca alternifolia, the source of tea tree oil; the genome described here […]
An old ad stated, “Without chemicals, life itself would be impossible,” but it’s only more recently that we’ve begun to understand the importance of semiochemicals – chemicals produced for communication. Leach et al. pull together insights from chemical ecologists, soil scientists, plant pathologists and entomologists in this excellent review of the phytobiome (all the living […]
Salinity is a growing problem for food production. Progress has been made in understanding how plants tolerate salinity, mostly focused on strategies for tolerance at the plasma membrane and cytosol. Bose et al. review studies that focus on how the chloroplast is affected by salinity. The authors review the roles of Na+, Cl− and K+ […]
Transporters are massively important for the functions of a cell and organism, but also notoriously difficult to study. Larsen et al. review advances in the tools available for transporter research, ranging from expression in Xenopus oocytes to genetic screens using toxic analogues and fluorescent substrates, to in silico approaches. The authors provide examples of how […]