Entries by Mary Williams

Plant Science Research Weekly: January 7, 2022

Happy New Year! Welcome to our latest edition of Plant Science Research Weekly, featuring contributions from several of our new cohort of Plantae Fellows, who will be helping us keep up with exciting developments in plant sciences. Enjoy! The evolutionary advantage of losing genes after endosymbiosis The emergence of eukaryotes is associated with endosymbiosis of […]

Plant Physiology Webinar: Highlighting Focus Issue on Transport and Signaling

Membrane transport is essential for nutrition and cellular homeostasis, it plays key roles in signaling and development, and it is a vital component of responses to biotic and abiotic stress. The December 2021 Plant Physiology Focus Issue highlights recent advances in our understanding of the molecular mechanisms behind membrane transport, its integration with signaling, and its roles in […]

Plant Science Research Weekly: December 10, 2021

Review. Chloroplast development in green plant tissues: The interplay between light, hormones, and transcriptional regulation Chloroplasts are indispensable for plant growth and physiological performance; not only for photosynthesis but also for many biochemical processes. Due to the endosymbiont origin of the chloroplast, chloroplast development requires sophisticated machinery to relay the signals between the nuclear and […]

Plant Physiology welcomes 13 new Assistant Features Editors

By Yunde Zhao, Mary Williams, and Mike Blatt Plant Physiology initiated the Assistant Features Editor (AFE) program four years ago to help disseminate discoveries published in the journal and to train the next generation of editors and reviewers. Our AFEs are promising early-career scientists and they bring their passion for science to our journal, communicating […]

Focus Issue on Architecture and Plasticity (Plant Physiol)

The November issue of Plant Physiology is a Focus Issue on Architecture and Plasticity. One of the most intriguing aspects of plant growth and development is the environmental responsiveness (also known as “plasticity”) of plant architecture (growth form). Depending on environmental conditions, roots can grow deeper, branch more, or be hairier; leaves can be thicker […]

Policy: Biome Awareness Disparity is BAD for tropical ecosystem conservation and restoration (J. Appl. Ecol.)

You’ve heard of “Plant Awareness Disparity” (10.1002/ppp3.10153), a term gaining popularity to highlight the fact that plants are sometimes overlooked as living organisms (replacing the abelist term “Plant Blindess”). You’ve also recently read that plants with bigger, more conspicuous flowers get more research attention (10.1038/s41477-021-00912-2)  Silviera et al. extend these observations and demonstrate that some […]

A giant NLR gene confers broad-spectrum resistance to Phytophthora sojae in soybean (Nature Comms.)

Phytophthora sojae is an oomycete pathogen that causes huge yield losses in soybean. Genetic studies have identified several loci that confer resistance (Resistance-to-P. sojae loci, or Rps). Here, Wang et al. have cloned Rps11 and found that it encodes a very large NLR (nucleotide-binding site leucine-rich repeat) protein. Their initial mapping identified a cluster of […]

Plant Science Research Weekly: November 19, 2021

Focus Issue on Architecture and Plasticity The November issue of Plant Physiology is a Focus Issue on Architecture and Plasticity. One of the most intriguing aspects of plant growth and development is the environmental responsiveness (also known as “plasticity”) of plant architecture (growth form). Depending on environmental conditions, roots can grow deeper, branch more, or […]