Arabidopsis genetics has identified numerous genes required for pathogen perception and defense response activation. Some of these genes are functionally conserved across plants and others are not. Toll-Interleukin1-Receptor (TIR)-domain NLRs (TNLs) are immune receptors that function upstream of EDS1 (enhanced disease susceptibility) genes. Lapin, Kovacova, Sun, et al. set out to investigate the phylogeny and […]
In Southeast Asian countries, rice accounts for two-thirds of the caloric intake for many people. This narrow dietary base is often correlated with vitamin A deficiency, which can cause blindness, anemia and weakened immunity. In an effort to enhance vitamin A consumption, rice has been engineered to produce provitamin A carotenoids in the grain; this […]
Review: Sulfated plant peptide hormones It’s hard to believe that when I was a student we were taught that “plants don’t have peptide hormones”. Since then we’ve discovered many diverse families of plant peptide hormones (see the Teaching Tool on peptide hormones for an excellent overview). Here, Kaufmann and Sauter review one family, the sulfated […]
Synthetic biology is a set of tools, a way of thinking, the integration of engineering principles into biological sciences, and potentially the biggest opportunity for advances in plant sciences since PCR. Yet many struggle to define it, and fewer still grasp its full potential. We have conducted a set of video interviews with leaders in the […]
Happy 30th Birthday to The Plant Cell! Here are a few of the many images that have graced our cover over the past years…
In recent years, a number of tools have been developed to describe and model plant morphogenesis, and these approaches have greatly informed our understanding of the molecular processes that underpin the control of growth. This excellent review by Pałubicki et al. is “an attempt to bring together a large number of computational modeling concepts and […]
SCHENGEN 3 [SGN3, also known as GASSHO1 (GSO1)] is a leucine-rich repeat receptor kinase (LRR-RK) previously shown to interact with CIF peptides (CASPARIAN STRIP INTEGRITY FACTORS) to regulate the development of the Casparian strip boundary in roots. Here, Okuda et al. characterize the CIF/LRR-RK interaction. They show that that there is a wide range of […]
RALFs (Rapid Alkalinization Factors, based on historical observations that they induce alkalization of the extracellular space) are signaling peptides with diverse roles. RALF4 is required for pollen tube growth and guidance through its interactions with CrRLK1Ls and leucine-rich extension (LRX) proteins. Moussu, Broyart et al. characterized the complex formed between RALF4 and homodimers of the […]
RALFs (Rapid Alkalinization Factors, based on historical observations that they induce alkalization of the extracellular space) are signaling peptides with diverse roles. RALFs have previously been shown to bind to the extracellular domain of (among others) FERONIA (FER), a member of the Catharanthus roseus RLK1-like (CrRLK1L) family. LORELIE-Like GPI-membrane anchored protein (LLG) has been shown […]