Recent Posts

What We're Reading: November 16th

Photosynthesis Special Issue This week’s ‘What We’re Reading’ summarizes the latest papers from the field of photosynthesis research.  This includes a review on the discovery of the Calvin-Benson cycle by Tom Sharkey, and an Expert View on the relationship between nitrogen and photosynthesis…

Self Control: SLF Proteins are Essential for Preventing Self-Fertilization in Petunia

A pollen grain lands on a stigma, swells with water, and sprouts a pollen tube, which races through the style to deliver sperm to the ovule below. When the pollen arises from the flower itself, this process often stops in its tracks. Self-incompatibility (SI) between pollen and pistil promotes outcrossing…

The Plantae Job Center - November 2, 2018

    Internship Posts: Undergraduate Summer Research Experience Program, Center for Engineering MechanoBiology (CEMB), Philapelphia, PA, USA Biochemist Intern - Trait Discovery (199253W-01), DuPont Pioneer, Johnston, IA, USA PhD student in Hydrology & Climate…

Genetic Basis of Natural Variation of Rice Ionomics

(Translated from the Chinese  original http://news.hzau.edu.cn/2018/1101/52991.shtml) Nanhu News Network (Correspondent Sheng Ke) On October 30th, the research group of Professor Tian Xingming from the Rice Science Team of the National Key Laboratory of Crop Genetic Improvement of our School…

In Brief: Loss of a Silencing Cascade Contributed to Indica Rice Domestication

Thousands of years of artificial selection have produced rice plants (Oryza sativa) that are vastly different from their wild progenitor species in terms of architecture, yield, and resilience. Most of the genetic changes linked to rice domestication involved genes encoding transcription factors. However,…

Microtubules Direct Lignin and Xylan Deposition in a Cellulose-Independent Manner

Although secondary cell walls represent the bulk of plant biomass, the mechanism by which cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin assemble into a functional three-dimensional matrix is unknown. Cortical microtubules are thought to guide cellulose deposition in the plasma membrane by defining the trajectories…

Editor Profile: Daniel J. Kliebenstein

How many genes control a phenotype? Dozens? Hundreds? Thousands? The whole genome? And what about the epigenome? Such fascinating questions on biological complexity and the interaction between genes and the environment (or, in the case of infection by a plant pathogen, multiple genomes) have long…

Active Support: GHR1 is a Pseudokinase that acts as a Scaffolding Component

Plants balance CO2 uptake with water loss via a complex network of signals regulating stomatal aperture size. Stomata close in response to a number of stimuli, including drought, low light intensity, low air humidity, elevated intercellular CO2 concentration, pathogens, and certain air-borne chemicals…

A separated vortex ring underlies the flight of the dandelion ($) (Nature)

Dandelions, perennial herbs from temperate zones, have the capacity to spread their seeds through wind for distances as far as 1 km. Ignazio Maria Viola and Naomi Nakayama with their team endeavored to understand this passive flight mechanism. They analyzed the flight mechanism of the dandelion by characterizing…