IN BRIEF by Gregory Bertoni [email protected] RNA metabolism is key to a number of crucial processes in the cell, including transcription, RNA splicing, translation, and gene regulation. For efficient translation, mature mRNAs must have a 7-methylguanosine cap on the 5′ end to help recruit the translation machinery and protect the mRNA from exonucleases. If the […]
Recently, we’ve been profiling first authors of Plant Cell papers that are selected for In Brief summaries. Here are the first-author profiles from the October issue of The Plant Cell. Olivia Wilkins and Christoph Hafemeister, featured first authors of EGRINs (Environmental Gene Regulatory Influence Networks) in Rice That Function in the Response to Water Deficit, […]
Last week I was a guest of the PhD students of the iGRAD-Plant program, based at Heinrich Heine University (HHU), Düsseldorf (Germany). The program is an international joint PhD program with the nearby Research Center Jülich and the Genetics Program of Michigan State University. The program is funded by a grant (coordinated by Professor Andreas […]
Warmest congratulations to Yoshinori Ohsumi, 2016 Nobel Laureate in Physiology or Medicine, “for his discoveries of mechanisms for autophagy”. Autophagy (self-eating) is a process through which cells selectively degrade and recycle cellular components. Ohsumi’s research has primarily focused on yeast, but he has also studied autophagy in plants. In fact, for the past twenty years […]
The other day I was talking to a friend about the need to demystify plants, so that teachers feel as confident in their teaching of plant biology as they do about animal biology. I wonder if sometimes we teach plants too much in isolation, so it’s not always clear how plants relate to other organisms […]
IN BRIEF by Nancy R. Hofmann [email protected] Plant cell walls consist of cellulose microfibrils embedded in a matrix of polymers including hemicelluloses. As one of the main hemicelluloses in the cell walls of dicots, xyloglucan is an important target of study to understand plant cell walls in general and for polymer applications in biotechnology. Xyloglucan […]
IN BRIEF by Jennifer Mach [email protected] Plants can dispose of organs such as leaves and recycle the nutrients in these organs into new leaves, seeds, or storage organs. However, when separated from its photosystem proteins, chlorophyll can be phototoxic, absorbing light and producing high-energy electrons. The complex chlorophyll degradation pathway solves this problem by breaking […]
IN BRIEF by Jennifer Lockhart [email protected] Heat and drought stress greatly restrict crop productivity, but most of what we know about a plant’s response to these stresses comes from controlled laboratory studies. This factor, along with the complex nature of these responses, has hampered efforts to breed and engineer crops with improved stress tolerance. Plants […]
Recently, we’ve been profiling first authors of Plant Cell papers that are selected for In Brief summaries. Here are the first-author profiles from the September issue of The Plant Cell. Inmaculada Couso, featured first author of Synergism between inositol polyphosphates and TOR kinase signaling in nutrient sensing, growth control and lipid metabolism in Chlamydomonas Current […]