Scott Hayes Affiliation: Laboratory of Plant Physiology, Wageningen University, Wageningen 6708 PB, The Netherlands ORCiD: 0000-0001-8943-6238 [email protected] To breed or not to breed, that is the question. The switch from vegetative to reproductive growth is one of the most important steps in a plant’s life cycle. Flower too early or too late and there is […]
As someone with a background in plant molecular genetics, I confess to occasionally forgetting about location. Reverse genetics is a powerful tool for picking apart gene networks, but in which organ do these genes act? Which tissue of that organ? Which cells of that tissue and which compartment of those cells? These are important questions […]
Scott Hayes, [email protected] The adoption of Arabidopsis thaliana as a model plant in the early 1980s led to a revolution in plant molecular genetics. Its diminutive size, rapid generation time and small genome made Arabidopsis a fantastic tool, allowing us to build a complex picture of the genetic architecture underlying plant development (Koornneef and Meinke, 2010). […]
Brassinosteroids (BRs) have come a long way since their first identification in 1979 as pollen-derived, growth-promoting hormones. Multiple studies have demonstrated roles for BRs in the control of cell elongation, pollen fertility, root architecture, seed germination, stomatal patterning, vascular development, seed germination and flowering (Yang et al., 2011). In recent years, additional roles for BRs […]
How do you make the invisible visible? It’s a question that crops up again and again in molecular biology. Abscisic acid (ABA) is one of the most important hormones in plants and is essential for survival in suboptimal conditions. Despite this, we have only a basic understanding of where and when this hormone acts. ABA […]
The humble spud. Simple, unassuming, yet vital in supporting a large proportion of the world’s population. Historically speaking, much of the research performed on potatoes (Solanum tuberosum) has gone into enhancing their disease resistance, justifiably so given the severe famines brought about through potato blight in the mid-1800s and early 1900s. More recently, however, researchers […]