Review: Wheat genomics comes of age Due to its highly repetitive, polyploid genome, wheat genomics has lagged behind that of other cereals, but new tools promise to begin closing that gap. Uauy reviews these new tools, which include access to full genomes of several wheat varieties, gene expression data from hundreds of publicly available RNA-sequencing […]
“The benefits of organic agriculture are widely debated. Although some promote it as a solution to our sustainable food security challenges, others condemn it as a backward and romanticized version of agriculture that would lead to hunger and environmental devastation.” Seufert and Ramankutty address these conflicting views through a systematic analysis of organic agriculture’s potential […]
Of the 3000 or so proteins housed in the chloroplast, we know the functions of only a few hundred. One approach to identify function is to first identify plastid proteins found exclusively in photosynthetic organisms. This subset, GreenCut2, is further subdivided by whether the proteins are found in red algae, diatoms, and/or green plants. Fristedt […]
It is widely recognized that defense incurs a cost in terms of reduced growth. Karasov et al. explore the nature of this tradeoff. They observe that rather than tradeoff being driven directly by metabolic competition, it appears to occur upstream through regulatory processes including antagonism between hormones. They describe situations in which the availability of […]
Due to its highly repetitive, polyploid genome, wheat genomics has lagged behind that of other cereals, but new tools promise to begin closing that gap. Uauy reviews these new tools, which include access to full genomes of several wheat varieties, gene expression data from hundreds of publicly available RNA-sequencing datasets, next-generation sequencing enabled trait mapping, […]
The fossil record suggests stomata-like pores were present on the surfaces of land plants over 400 million years ago. Whether stomata arose once or whether they arose independently across newly evolving land plant lineages has long been a matter of debate. In Arabidopsis, a genetic toolbox has been identified which tightly controls stomatal development and […]
Scott Abbott and View ORCID ProfileDaniel J. Fairbanks Genetics October 1, 2016 vol. 204 no. 2 407-422; https://doi.org/10.1534/genetics.116.195198 Reprinted here under CC-BY permission. Available in PDF form here. Here, translated into English, GENETICS republishes the original Mendel article. As discussed in the Perspectives by Daniel J. Fairbanks and Scott Abbott this translation differs from others […]
Andrew Groover is a scientist with the US Forest Service in Davis California and holds a faculty position at UC Davis. He was recently profiled in New Phytologist. What inspired your interest in plant science? I grew up spending much of my time exploring the woods by the Chattahoochee River near my parents’ house in […]
Aflatoxins are toxic metabolites produced by some species of Aspergillus fungi that can occur on numerous crop plants. When ingested by animals, aflatoxins cause health problems including liver cancer and stunted growth. Thakare et al. used host-induced gene silencing (HIGS) to block aflatoxin production in maize. They introduced into maize a kernel-specific RNAi construct specific […]