Plants constantly compete for light, and the threat of shading by neighbors has been a powerful driving force for the adaptive plasticity during evolution. Changes in both light quantity and quality, most notably a reduced ratio of red to far-red wavelengths (low R:FR), serve as early warning signals…

Across multicellular eukaryotes, ARGONAUTE (AGO) proteins are the core of RNA silencing, steering development, defense, and stress responses by biding small RNA guides to seek out genes for repression. In plants and animals, these functions are distributed across multiple AGO homologs that support a…

Kalenchoe plants, sometimes called “Mother of Thousands” are instantly recognizable by the abundance of little plantlets that form on their leaf margins. Kalenchoe daigremontiana is probably the most recognizable species, in which plantlet formation is constitutive, but other species in this genus…

Rapeseed (Brassica napus) is an important crop providing vegetable oil. Yield is positively correlated with increased numbers of seeds, siliques, and branches. In a previous study, a rapeseed germplasm having normal branch and silique numbers was crossed with another germplasm having higher branch and…

Wheat is rich in gluten proteins which provide texture and structure to many foods such as breads. The abundance of low molecular weight glutenin subunits (LMW-GSs) and high molecular weight glutenin subunits (HMW-GSs) determines gluten strength and dough quality. Wheat cultivars commonly contain three…

Plant parasitic nematodes such as root-knot nematodes (RKNs) are thought to use chemical cues from the plant to locate their favorable hosts. These chemical cues can code for host specificity and can drive the attraction or repulsion of nematodes. Recently, Wu et al. investigated the role of benzoxazinoids…

Review: More is better, the importance of plasmodesmata in C4 photosynthesis Plant (and many algal) cells facilitate cell-to-cell movement through specialized regulated pores called plasmodesmata that connect neighboring cells, and there is a rich literature in how plasmodesmata regulate intercellular…

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