When nitrogen or nitrate availability is high, symbiotic nodule generation is curtailed to conserve the associated energy cost. But how does the presence of nitrate interfere with nodulation and symbiosis?  Previously, genetic studies identified nitrate unresponsive symbiosis (nrsym) mutants in Lotus…

Chromatin remodellers are highly conserved eukaryotic proteins with regulatory roles in various aspects of DNA metabolism including DNA repair, gene expression and mitosis. Here, Kang et al. examine the function of the CHROMATIN REMODELLING19 (CHR19) in Arabidopsis thaliana. Using two T-DNA insertion…

How would you feel if you developed a plant that is tolerant to a particular stress stimulus and found out that it can also tolerate another stress? Bettgenhaeuser and found that this happened when plant breeders developed barley varieties resistant to the powdery mildew disease (caused by the fungal…

Much of our understanding of plant immunity comes from studies of pathogens that infect mesophyll tissues, (e.g., Pseudomonas syringae). However, there are many pathogens that specifically invade vascular tissues (e.g., Xanthomonas oryzae pv. oryzae; Xoo), which causes rice bacterial blight. In a recent…

Have you ever heard the terms ‘zoochauvinism’, ‘plant blindness’ or ‘plant awareness disparity’? Do you know that in a Twitter poll about 30% of the participants voted plants out of wildlife? Ever noticed how important documentaries like ‘Planet Earth II’ and ‘Our Planet’ prefer animals…

Review: A rulebook for peptide control of legume–microbe endosymbiosis Symbiotic associations with bacterial or fungal partners enhance nutrient uptake for most plants, and recent years have uncovered the very sophisticated means by which these associations are established and controlled. Peptides…

Dana Amira Dahhan, co-first author of "Proteomic Characterization of Isolated Arabidopsis Clathrin-Coated Vesicles Reveals Evolutionarily Conserved and Plant Specific Components” Current Position: PhD student at University of Wisconsin-Madison (Madison, WI,  USA) Education: Biochemistry, B.S.…

Giovanni Melandri, first author of "Can biochemical traits bridge the gap between genomics and plant performance? A study in rice under drought" Position: Postdoctoral Researcher, INRAE Bordeaux-Aquitaine, UMR 132 BFP, Villenave-d'Ornon (France). Education: PhD in Plant Physiology, Wageningen…