Recent Posts

Repressor of Endosperm Formation in Rice

Tonosaki et al. explore how the Polycomb Repressive Complex 2 component EMBRYONIC FLOWER2a represses rice endosperm development both before and after fertilization. The Plant Cell (2020) https://bit.ly/33DQdqW By Kaoru Tonosaki and Tetsu Kinoshita Iwate University and Yokohama City University   Background:…

Slice and Dice: DCL2 Mediates the Production of 22-nt siRNAs That Influence Trait Variation in Soybean

In plants, small interfering RNAs (siRNAs) serve as key regulators of gene expression. While 24-nucleotide (nt) siRNAs are produced by DCL3 and mediate transcriptional silencing of transposons and pericentromeric chromatin through RdDM (Borges and Martienssen, 2015), 22-nt siRNAs are processed by DCL2…

To grow or not to grow: specific lipoxygenases control wound-induced growth restriction

To grow or not to grow: specific lipoxygenases control wound-induced growth restriction Amna Mhamdi Ghent University, Department of Plant Biotechnology and Bioinformatics, and VIB Center for Plant Systems Biology, 9052 Ghent, Belgium Address correspondence to: amna.mhamdi@psb.ugent.be As…

I Get by With a Little Help From a Friend

Klasek, Inoue, and Theg show how the chloroplast chaperonin Cpn60 binds Plastidic type I signal peptidase 1 in the chloroplast stroma and delivers it to the cpSecI translocon for targeting to the thylakoid membrane. Plant Cell https://doi.org/10.1105/tpc.20.00309 By Laura Klasek, University of California,…

Plantae Presents: Carlos Ballaré and Haim Trebes

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Plantae Presents - Carlos Ballaré and Haim Trebes Recorded Wednesday November 25 10am EST, 4pm CET Carlos Ballaré: Phytochrome, jasmonate, and the balance between growth and defense Prof. Carlos L. Ballaré studies the mechanisms by which plants obtain environmental information. Carlos…

Changing the Shape of the Apex via Cell-size Regulation

Wang et al. demonstrate that Arabidopsis SAUR17 promotes apical hook development and closed cotyledons in the dark by protecting the cell-expansion inhibitor PP2C-D1. The Plant Cell (2020) https://doi.org/10.1105/tpc.20.00283   By Jiajun Wang, Ning Sun, Fangfang Zhang, Renbo Yu, Haodong Chen,…

Designing Drought Resistant Crops for Temperate Climates

Töpfer et al. created a combined leaf metabolism/gas exchange model to predict water saving and productivity in temperate climates. Plant Cell https://doi.org/10.1105/tpc.20.00132 By Nadine Töpfera and R. George Ratcliffeb .....a Leibniz Institute of Plant Genetics and Crop Plant Research, Gatersleben,…

Designer for Pollen Wall Surface Pattern Formation

H. Li et al. identified and characterized a new genetic factor that controls grass-specific pollen wall pattern formation in rice. The Plant Cell (2020) https://doi.org/10.1105/tpc.20.00551 By HuanJun Li, Yu-Jin Kim and Wanqi Liang Background: Pollen, the male gametophyte in flowering plants, is…

Excising the mystery of single guide RNA processing

Sophia G. Zebell Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Cold Spring Harbor, NY, USA zebell@cshl.edu Over the past 10 years, utilization of CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing in plants has rapidly and significantly altered the scale and scope of both basic research and crop development.…