Entries by Mary Williams

Expression   atlas   of Selaginella   moellendorffii   provides   insights   into   the evolution of vasculature, secondary metabolism, and roots (Plant Cell)

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Lycophytes, including the model species Selaginella moellendorffii, are extant (still alive today) seedless vascular plants that were particularly abundant around 400-300 million years ago (and major contributors to the formation of coal). To further understand the biology of some of these oldest extant vascular plants, Ferrari et al. generated a comprehensive RNA sequencing-based expression atlas, […]

Insect herbivory antagonizes leaf cooling responses to elevated temperature in tomato (PNAS)

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Plants have strategies to cool themselves when the temperature is hot. These include increasing their rate of transpirational cooling through stomatal opening and raising their leaves, which can enhance air flow. Previous studies have shown a role for the heat shock proteins (HSPs) and their cochaperone SGT1 in mediating this response, in part through stabilizing […]

Monitoring and mitigation of toxic heavy metals and arsenic accumulation in food crops: A case study of an urban community garden (Plant Direct)

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Urban gardens are a great way to introduce people to plant science, to bring fresh food into areas underserved by grocery stores (“food deserts”), and can promote a sense of community. But as Cooper et al. observe, many potential sites can be contaminated with heavy metals (lead, cadmium) and metalloids (arsenic, As) as a consequence […]

Plant Science Research Weekly: February 7

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Review. Gossypium genomics: Trends, scope, and utilization for cotton improvement Cotton (Gossypium spp.) provides the world’s most important natural fiber, and I suspect with our growing realization of the problems with plastics there will be still more demand for it. Yang et al. review the current state of Gossypium genomics. As a crop that has […]

Have Abstract? Will Travel.

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By Laura Klasek The beginning of 2020 brought resolutions, refreshed to-do lists, and, somewhere in the rush of things drifting over your desk, the opening of Plant Biology 2020 abstract submission and registration. Some of you already know you will be in Washington, D.C. this July because you haven’t missed a Plant Biology conference since […]

Review: Characteristics, drivers and feedbacks of global greening (Nat. Rev. Earth Environ.)

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Whenever we talk about global trends there are of course local variations. Here, Piao et al. discuss recent trends of global greening, which is occurring at arctic as well as temperate and tropical regions. Overall, this greening is attributed to increasing atmospheric CO2, which promotes plant growth, but artic greening is also a consequence of […]

Putative cis-regulatory elements predict iron deficiency responses in Arabidopsis roots (Plant Physiol.)

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Iron (Fe) is an important micronutrient needed by plants for survival. Plants have evolved a range of morphological, physiological and molecular responses to Fe availability, including the transcriptional regulation of over one thousand genes in response to Fe deficiency (-Fe) in Arabidopsis. However, the cis-regulatory elements (CREs) and their combinations that regulate the adaptive response […]

Three previously characterized resistances to yellow rust are encoded by a single locus Wtk1 (J. Exp. Bot.)

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Yellow rust is a fungal disease of wheat. Three mutants with enhanced resistance were identified in wild emmer wheat from different locations were previously mapped to the same region of chromosome 1B. Given that each locus showed a different degree of resistance, it was presumed that they were non-allelic. Klymiuk et al. have now shown […]

Perception of Agrobacterium tumefaciens flagellin by FLS2XL confers resistance to crown gall disease (Nature Plants)

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FLS2 is a well-characterized cell-surface receptor that recognizes a short epitope found on most bacterial flagellin proteins. The plant pathogen Agrobacterium tumefaciens, causative agent of crown gall disease, deviates strongly at this epitope region, and so is generally not recognized by FLS2 receptors, facilitating its pathogenicity. Fürst et al. set out to try to identify […]