Review: A series of fortunate events: Introducing Chlamydomonas as a reference organism Clamydomonas reinhardtii is the most thoroughly characterized unicellular alga. Like yeast, it is a single-celled eukaryotic organism that is easy to culture, and it lives predominantly in its haploid form but is readily mated for genetic studies. Additionally, it is light-responsive, photosynthetic, and […]
The 12 Principles of Plant Biology are a framework to support understanding of the critical roles of plants to create, improve and sustain life. These 12 inquiry-based activities were by Jane Ellis, Mary Williams, and Jeffrey Coker with support from the ASPB Education Foundation. They were developed to support the teaching of plant biology, and […]
The rate of most biological processes is ultimately determined by protein activity levels, which of course are determined by rate of degradation or inactivation as well as production. Dissmeyer reviews the Cys/Arg branch of the N-degron pathway (previously called the N-end rule pathway) that contributes to protein degradation. In this pathway, post-translational modifications including excision […]
Transport protein particles (TRAPPs) are multisubunit complexes that regulate intracellular trafficking, but haven’t yet been well characterized in plant cells. The authors previously identified AtTRAPPC11 as an abundant protein in the SYP61 vesicle proteome, with homology to mammalian TRAPPC11. Here, Rosquete et al. show that loss-of-function of TRAPPC11 causes abnormalities in the SYP61 vesicle trafficking […]
Review: Source–sink regulation in crops under water deficit ($) Plants have a remarkable ability to coordinate cellular activities across huge distances, yet we have only a basic understanding of how these remote activities are coordinated. A review by Rodrigues et al. summarizes what we know about the relationship between source (e.g., photosynthetic tissues) and sinks […]
Pentatricopeptide repeat (PPR) proteins bind RNA, using a code in which specific amino acid motifs recognize specific bases, similar to TAL effector proteins. In plants, PPR proteins localize almost exclusively to mitochondria and chloroplasts, with functions including RNA, stabilization, splicing and editing. Here, McDermott et al. used insights about the amino-acid to RNA code to […]
Plants have a remarkable ability to coordinate cellular activities across huge distances, yet we have only a basic understanding of how these remote activities are coordinated. A review by Rodrigues et al. summarizes what we know about the relationship between source (e.g., photosynthetic tissues) and sinks (e.g., growing tissues or seeds), and particularly how this […]
“Cysteine (HO2CCH(NH2)CH2SH) synthesis is the converging point of the three major pathways of primary metabolism: carbon, nitrate, and sulfate assimilation.” It’s hard enough to coordinate two pathways, let alone three; but these metabolic connections are revealed in that a deficiency in one nutrient affects assimilation rates of the others. As yet, the connections between pathways […]
The daily cycle of light and dark controls many facets of plant growth and development, but these cycles depend on and are most efficient when integrated with the rhythms of the circadian clock. Nohales et al. have identified a key mechanism that directly links the regulation of light-responsive genes and the regulation of the clock. […]