Arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi trade soil phosphate for plant carbon at arbuscules, the short-lived, branched hyphal structures they build inside root cortical cells, but how phosphate uptake is coordinated across this constantly changing interface has been hard to observe. McGaley et al. used non-invasive,…

Over millions of years, plants and pathogens have been engaged in an evolutionary war. As plants adopt new defense systems to protect themselves, pathogens evolve strategies to fight back. A well-characterized pathogen strategy is to secrete effectors that target plant defenses. Although protein effectors…

A major challenge in plant genome engineering is the precise insertion of large DNA sequences into a defined genomic location, preferably without involving a double-strand break. Addressing this longstanding technical hurdle, Ali and colleagues introduce a versatile gene-targeting platform based on the…

A lichen super-pangenome spotlights its genetic architecture and interaction secrets A lichen is a unique composite organism formed through close interactions between a filamentous fungus (mycobiont) and its photosynthetic partners [algae and/ or cyanobacteria, referred together as photobiont(s)].…

Current Biology has an excellent special issue on plant evolution full of  fascinating articles. As an example, a Primer by Zhuo Feng looks at how plants were catastrophically impacted by the end-Permian mass extinction event approximately 250 million years ago. The fossil record from the Cathaysian…

The ambient temperature for plant growth is increasingly unpredictable under the changing climate.  To ensure growth, the leaf is the immediate organ responding to maintain photosynthesis. In this review, Yang et al. point out stomatal development and dynamics as the adaptive responses to long-term…

When plants first moved onto land, they encountered challenges that aquatic ancestors never faced, including heat, dehydration, and rapidly changing environmental conditions. This review by Wang et al., explores how cytokinin signaling, a pathway best known for regulating plant growth and development,…

As close relatives of land plants, green algae provide insights into variations on photosynthesis. Many algae including Chlamydomonas reinhardtii have carbon-concentrating structures called pyrenoids that enrich CO2 around Rubisco, minimizing the competing oxygenation reaction. In a recent preprint,…