Plants are sessile organisms that have evolved sophisticated immune systems in defense of pathogens, thus maximizing the chance of survival. Most of our understanding of plant defenses comes from studies in angiosperms. Evolutionary molecular plant-microbe interactions (EvoMPMI) can reveal the origins of plant defenses, but have been limited by a lack of suitable pathosystems in […]
Soybean [Glycine max (L.) Merr.] is a globally important high-protein crop, whose breeding is an ongoing, important objective for plant biologists. Since soybean is a short-day plant, controlling flowering time is a key step to influence its adaptation to diverse latitudes and farming system. Recently, Yupeng Cai et al found that two classical flowering regulator […]
To fight off invading pathogens, plants such as Arabidopsis are intrinsically programmed with a subset of defense responses often known as pattern-triggered immunity (PTI) and effector-triggered immunity (ETI). AvrRpt2, an effector secreted by the pathogen Pseudomonas syringe, is a protease that can cleave several central regulators of immune response in plants. The nitrate-induced domain (NOI) […]
As plants are sessile organisms, they have developed highly sophisticated mechanisms to allow the modulation of development in response to environmental changes, thus maximizing their chance of survival. When soil dries, soybeans with a slow canopy wilting (SW) phenotype have delayed canopy/leaf wilting to overcome the negative impacts of drought stress. Two exotic (landraces) plant […]
The characteristics of flowers, including morphology, color, nectar and fragrance, are closely related to their pollination methods. To attract pollinators, plants often produce large, colorful, or fragrant flowers. Increasing evidence has indicated that herbivorous feeding activity also affects flower evolution, but few studies look at the effects of both pollination and insect gnawing on flower […]
Plants are sessile organisms that have evolved an extraordinary immune system to optimally adapt to the risky environment, which includes hazards such as insect chewing, weather damaging, and pathogen invasion. But the signaling mechanism of how the physical damage of cells triggers the intracellular defense response remains to be elucidated. Recently Hander el al. demonstrated […]
Plants often optimize their development according to the prevailing environmental conditions, of which light is one of the most important. Arabidopsis uses a PSI-PSII megacomplex as the photosystem reaction center, to transfer the excessive energy from PSII to PSI rapidly. Recently, Yokono et al. proposed that sun-plants may accumulate more PSI-PSII megacomplex than shade-plants to […]
Plants have developed their own strategies to ensure developmental plasticity, such as the use of phytohormones. The phytohormone auxin affects multiple aspects of plant development. Auxin is perceived via a co-receptor complex called TIR1/AFB-AUX/IAA, and SCF TIR1/AFB degrades AUX/IAA proteins to liberate the downstream transcription factors, leading to the auxin response. However, the degradation rate […]
To secure food availability for the world population, plant scientists study the interactions between crop species and pathogens. Plants have robust defense strategies that they employ when attacked. On the other hand, microbes have multiple strategies to manipulate host functions to suppress these defenses and/or enhance the growth of the microbe. Recently Turnbull et al. […]