Ai and Li et al. explore the mechanism by which an RNA-binding protein regulates plant immunity. By Gan Ai1,3, Tianli Li 1,3, Hai Zhu1, Xiaohua Dong1, Xiaowei Fu1, Chuyan Xia1, Weiye Pan1, Maofeng Jing1, Danyu Shen1, Ai Xia1, Brett M. Tyler2, Daolong Dou1* 1College of Plant Protection, Academy…

Plant Physiology Webinar: How Respiratory Energy Can Drive *Everything* Celebrating the April 2023 Focus Issue on Respiration Recorded Thursday April 6, 2023   About this webinar Respiration is central to plant metabolism and consumes roughly half the carbon fixed by photosynthesis.…

Few topics are as inherently interesting from both fundamental and applied perspectives as salt tolerance in crop plants. From the basic science side, cells have several strategies that they use to keep Na+ levels low in their cytosol in spite of what can be a very steep concentration gradient from out…

As with people, plants blush in difficult circumstances. Situations such as nutrient stress make plants uncomfortable, resulting in the accumulation of anthocyanins in different plant tissues and color changes in the tissues. Jezek et al. reviewed how and why anthocyanins accumulate in foliar tissues…

Smoke is a crucial germination trigger in ecosystems with naturally recurring fires, such as savannas and Mediterranean forests. There are various compounds in smoke, yet karrikins (KARs) –the primary product of cellulose combustion– have dominated the research efforts to elucidate the mechanisms…

Like all organisms, plants respond to changes in temperature by activating pathways that enable them to stay alive in spite of rising or lowering temperatures. Interestingly though, there is no universal temperature sensing mechanism across the domains of life. Changes in membrane fluidity (think of…

The effect of temperature on plant morphology is known as thermomorphogenesis. The phytohormone auxin is important for thermo-induced cell elongation. In Arabidopsis thaliana, Phytochrome-Interacting Factor 4 (PIF4) forms the central hub of the thermal response pathway and directly regulates auxin synthesis…

Chromatin changes are at the core of plant development and adaptation, as they constitute a crucial layer of gene expression control. The effects of different chromatin marks have historically been studied through mutations to the protein complexes depositing and removing the marks, which results in…