Heavy metals are a potential threat to human health, especially in areas with high industrial activity where the metals leach in the soil to contaminate underground water. These metals are a threat to plants too, resulting in stunted growth and their eventual death. Wu et al. carried out a mechanistic analysis of how plants use […]
Bacterial infections are a serious issue for crop plants and it is thus imperative to understand the mechanisms employed by plants to develop resistance against pathogens. Malukani et al. have identified a receptor kinase in rice, WALL-ASSOCIATED KINASE-LIKE 21 (OsWAKL21.2) that perceives pathogen-induced damage to the plant cell wall. Overexpression of this kinase in rice […]
Note: This is the second of a two-part interview series. You can see the first part here. At the dawn of this year, not any one of us would have even imagined that the whole world, within months, would be obsessed by a word hitherto familiar only to a sprinkling of scientists. But this word “coronavirus” […]
Note: This is the first of a two-part interview series. You can view the second interview in this series here. At the dawn of this year, not any one of us would have even imagined that the whole world, within months, would be obsessed by a word hitherto familiar only to a sprinkling of scientists. […]
High soil salinity has implications greater than what meets the eye; in addition to the apparent ‘ionic’ stress caused by the toxic sodium (Na+) and chloride (Cl–) ions, it causes osmotic stress (drought-like condition), altered potassium (K+) homeostasis, inhibition of photosynthesis and a plethora of other effects. Plants have evolved complex signaling pathways to deal […]
Plant cells are known to initiate local and systemic signaling in response to certain stressful conditions to safeguard cells in the immediate vicinity as well as that are far from the site of stimuli. In this study, Cheval and co-workers have characterized a pathway in plant cells for sensing and responding to chitin, a polysaccharide […]
What are the chances that homologs of a vital animal protein could be found in plants, and how much structural and functional similarity would they share? These questions led to the discovery of Calcineurin B-like (CBL) and CBL-interacting protein kinase (CIPK) protein families in plants. In this review, Tang and co-workers discuss how knowledge of […]
Cell death, like all other cellular processes, is controlled by a highly complex signaling network. A search for the targets of Arabidopsis calcium dependent protein kinase1 (CPK1) by Durian and co-workers has revealed that it phosphorylates ORESARA1 (ORE1), a master regulator of leaf senescence responses, in a region necessary for its downstream gene activation. Characterization […]
At the dawn of this year, not any one of us would have even imagined that the whole world, within months, would be obsessed by a word hitherto familiar only to a sprinkling of scientists. But this word “coronavirus” today seems omnipresent. The pandemic situation caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, termed COVID-19, has changed the […]